The Dark Ages, an era of serial killer thugs
called knights, Oxford-educated academic assassins, outlandish homicide rates, blood-eagle-loving
Vikings, half-starved peasants so mad they danced until they dropped dead, and who could
forget the hairdressers whose part-time gig was performing horrific amputations? It was a tough old life back then, and we’re
sure you’ll agree pretty soon. Let’s start with Medieval light entertainment. In 1194 on Shrove Tuesday in London, the peasants
were out in large numbers for a game of soccer, what’s now referred to as mob football. William FitzStephen, a 12th-century English
monk, wrote about this game, played by the masses of the town, one giant team against
another. His chronicle states, “Richard the First
had been crowned king of England for the second time, a great crowd of young Londoners gathered
together to play ball.” So far, so good. Sounds like fun, but as usual, the game got
out of hand. William wrote, “The game began in the fields
outside the city but soon moved to the streets and squares, where it became more dangerous
and violent. Many were injured, and some killed in the
tumult.” He said the city authorities tried to stop
it, but “the young men were too numerous and too passionate to be easily restrained.” Sport in the Dark Ages - also called Middle
Ages and Medieval times, from the 5th century to the 15th century, could be a brutal affair,
so the peasants loved a bit of soccer, very, very hardcore soccer. Sure, the elites liked to joust, and that
was rough, but peasants kicking a ball about was far more chaotic. It was a battle as much as it was a fun pastime,
and like many of the things you’ll hear today, a fine example of just how tough it
was to live through the Dark Ages. Just wait until you hear about what happened
at Oxford. Your mind will be blown out of your head. To get back to our intense game of soccer,
the peasants of the time would take an inflated pig’s bladder, and two teams, often the
men of a whole village or town, would try to get the ball to the other side of town. There weren’t too many rules. The general agreement was you shouldn’t
kill anyone on the opposing team, although that happened, just as William the Monk pointed
out. Another chronicle from the 1200s talks about
two men who died playing the game. One was smashed in the face with a stone,
and the other apparently ran into a dagger. You might think running into a dagger was
some shoddy detective work, but you’ll understand later why this was nothing out of the ordinary. But it’s one reason why kings in both England
and France banned mob soccer. The Mayor of London under King Edward II called
it one of the “many evils” which “God forbid.” In 1363, King Edward III of England, evidently
a killjoy, banned football, cock-fighting, iron-throwing, and other games he said were
the predisposition of the “idle.” The King noted that these people’s time
would be much better spent practicing archery for the next war. Wartime back then was pretty much all the
time. Life expectancy was about 30 years at this
time, although it was better for the nobility than for the commoners. As the philosopher Thomas Hobbes said later
in time, life for most people was “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” People in the Dark Ages lived under what’s
called a feudal system. This was a hierarchy with the monarchy right
at the top. Peasants were at the bottom, with nobles and
lords in the middle. The nobility owned the land, which they could
give to someone like a knight. Not all people who ran the lord’s land (fief)
were knights; some simply held the land, what were called vassals. They had an allegiance to support the lord,
who, in turn, had an allegiance to the monarchy. Knights, on the other hand, could've been
landless or have land granted to them. At the bottom of the pile, which was the majority
of people (85-90%), were the peasants. A type of peasant was a serf. They owned diddly squat. They were tied to the land. Other peasants who worked some kind of trade
were called Freemen. They were free to move about. There were also different levels of serfdom. Some serfs could move from manor to manor. Serfs had very few legal rights or protections. They couldn’t even get married without the
Lord’s permission. They had to pay the lord for this right, something
called a “merchet”. When the serf died, he had to pay, which meant
the lord had a legal right to take everything the serf owned. This was called a “heriot.” If that sounds unfair, it’s because it was. In 1214, a chronicler described lords that
took heriots as “vultures that prey upon death... worms feeding upon the corpse.” It's hard to imagine the emotional toll this
unfair system would have taken on a serf's mental health. While options for coping with stress and anxiety
were scarce in the 13th century, we're fortunate to have access to modern resources for our
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- and I’ve also linked them below in the description. Now back to those unfortunate serfs. Serfs also had to fix the lord’s houses,
plow for him, and go to war for him when required, which fell under the term “boon work.” To quote a movie, serfs were the most “wretched,
miserable, servile, pathetic trash” ever pooped into humanity. But at least these people were given a chance
to survive. They often didn’t when harvests were bad,
but their existence was a damn sight better than being a slave. Slaves had no rights at all. They were bought and sold and, unsurprisingly,
often treated badly. You know very well that the Romans kept slaves,
but the slave trade in Europe went into overdrive after the Roman Empire. In England, the Angles and Saxons traded slaves
with each other and also with the Vikings when the Vikings weren’t raiding villages
and taking away all their children. We can’t talk about the Dark Ages without
giving the Vikings a bit of our video space. As you might have guessed from watching TV
shows, the Scandinavian Vikings were a bit of a handful. In the 9th and 10th centuries, they wreaked
havoc across Europe and beyond, but England was a hotspot of brutality before the Vikings
settled there. In those centuries, they conducted over 200
raids on England, and they weren’t ever nice raids. The people of the kingdom of Northumbria experienced
appalling levels of Viking violence. Still, everywhere they went, Dublin, Orkney,
and the Shetlands off the coast of Scotland, East Anglia, and more, the Vikings gave no
quarter to the locals. In 866/87, according to one chronicle, the
“Danes made a great slaughter at York.” York had been an important Roman settlement,
but after their empire fell, the Anglo-Saxons took over, as they did all over England. It was an important place, which is why Ivar
the Boneless and a top commander of the so-called Great Heathen Army, Ubba, didn’t show any
mercy upon their arrival there. The Norse poem, Krákumál, also says the
Vikings wanted revenge after the Anglo-Saxons had put the Danish king and super-hero in
Norse mythology, Ragnar Lodbrok, in a snake pit. Ivar and Ubba literally weren’t taking any
prisoners when they arrived in York. The sagas state that they did the worst thing
possible to the King Ælla of Northumbria. The Old English text says they slaughtered
everyone, men, women, and children. They then asked for a tribute which they said
would make them ease off on the mass killing, but even when they got their payment, they
kept on with the slaughter. As for King Ælla, the sagas say he was given
the dreaded Blood Eagle. The poem states, “They caused the bloody
eagle to be carved on the back of Ælla, and they cut away all of the ribs from the spine,
and then they ripped out his lungs.” You can only imagine what those local folks
of places like Bridlington in Yorkshire felt when they saw Viking ships in the distance,
but the Vikings weren’t all about barbarity. They created Dane Law in England, a legal
system that espoused the importance of community and family relationships. Sure, the Vikings were fearless and, at times,
brutal, but they weren’t always heartless. Everyone back then, to some extent, had to
be ruthless from time to time. The Anglo-Saxons massacred the Danes, too. In 1004, they did that in a part of England,
and the records show they thought the Danes deserved it. Part of the text reads, “The Danes who had
sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat, were to be destroyed by
a most just extermination.” You don’t see anyone talking about “just”
war crimes today. All over England, the Anglo-Saxons did this
to Vikings. Archeological sites show how they attacked
unarmed people and then chopped off their heads. Violent xenophobia was the norm back then
The Vikings landed in North America, Russia, France, Iceland, and Greenland, usually surprising
the local communities and not sparing those who fought back, but they didn’t always
slaughter the women and kids. They had a particular fondness for pillaging
and plundering churches. Holy men weren’t exactly good at defending
themselves, and there were often valuables in the church or at the monasteries. In other places, they just demanded a tribute
to be paid forth…or else! After 200 years of this, parts of the British
Isles were full of these Viking people and their offspring. Their laws and their language played an important
part in the formation of Britain, but the people that changed everything were the Normans,
who had been Vikings themselves and then settled in Northern France. It was the Normans that wrote in the Domesday
Book that says in 1086, about 10 percent of the people in England were slaves, English
slaves. This is why life was so brutal back then for
the average person without much power or protection. In the 12th century, Scottish and Welsh raiders
would also snatch people and take them as slaves. Now you can see why serfs put up with what
they did. At this point in time, there were slave markets
all over Europe, just as there were for centuries to come. There was a thriving trade in selling slaves
from Bristol in England and sending them over to Ireland’s huge slave markets. This was not indentured servitude. It was full-blown slavery. In the late Dark Ages, North Africa’s pirates,
called the Barbary and Corsair pirates, also became well known for their raids across most
of Europe. They raided the coastlines of England, France,
Spain, Italy, and elsewhere, taking between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans as slaves,
although most of the raiding was just after the Dark Ages. Still, North African pirates raided Europe’s
coastlines from at least the 7th century to the 19th century. It’s impossible to know just how many slaves
they took in all that time, or even how many they captured during the Dark Ages, but the
answer is a hell of a lot. Slavery was a big deal in Europe, although
England and Wales could breathe a sigh of relief when the Normans banned the trade inside
England in the 12th century. That didn’t stop the trade, but it calmed
down. You might think serfdom sounds like slavery,
but it wasn’t the same, at least not exactly. Serfs couldn’t be bought or sold, but if
the land was sold to another lord, then the serfs were automatically part of the bargain. This made a large population of peasants all
but slaves in nature but not in name. As you’ll see, they knew that and would
occasionally fight back against the nobles to get themselves more rights. For one thing, they were sick of starving
to death. Their diet was terrible most of the time. They usually had bread, not the bread we’re
used to today, but a dark bread made from rye or barley. Wheat bread was seen as a luxury, as was meat,
which might only be eaten on holidays. It depended on their level of serfdom. What’s more, the bread was sometimes contaminated
with a fungus, which could cause scary hallucinations and or even lead to death, which brings us
to a very interesting feature of the Dark Ages. In the 1300s, there were reports all over
Europe of masses of people just starting to dance. Others joined in, some of them dancing until
they literally dropped dead. We now call this mass hysteria or mass psychogenic
illness, or at least that’s one theory. Maybe the devil did it… There were epidemics in France and England,
which became known as dancing manias. People wouldn’t just strut their stuff,
they’d often shout vulgar words, and take off their clothes, thousands of them at a
time, laughing and crying to the point of exhaustion and death. Others made love in the streets like animals. Many broke their limbs. This could have been purely psychological. It might have been a nervous system issue,
or maybe it was that trippy bread. Spider bites were also blamed at times, but
why did newcomers see the dancing and join in, then act as crazy as the crowd? That couldn’t be blamed on spiders or nervous
systems. There was an outbreak in 1278 in France, with
200 dancers: men, women, and children. They danced so hard on a bridge over the River
Meuse that it collapsed. England, Germany, and the Netherlands all
saw outbreaks of dancing plagues, with demonic possession often being said to be the cause. The fact is, when life is that hard, you can
understand madness being contagious. Those poor peasants suffered levels of stress
that we can’t even imagine, and they didn’t have yoga or Xanax. Back to the diet, the staple for a peasant
was porridge, a kind of gruel made from oats, barley, and millet. If they had cows or goats, they got milk,
cheese, and butter, and if the Lord allowed it, they got fish. One thing most peasants enjoyed was ale made
from fermented grain, which was often safer than drinking water. From 1300 to 1500, per capita consumption
of ale was 275–300 liters (60–66 gallons) a year, but ale consumption goes back to the
start of the Dark Ages. In 822, it’s written that a monk got the
idea to put hops in beer. Booze changed Europe, which, as you’ll soon
see, had some very negative consequences. Men drank more than women. While the man usually did most of the physical
work, the women did the lighter work. There were usually more men around than women
due to the fact that so many women died during childbirth. Even if the baby survived, it only had a 50%
chance of making it to the age of one. If the child got past this tricky stage of
life, the woman would take care of it. By the time the child was 12, he or she would
be working. There was no education for these peasant kids
other than what the mother passed on during early youth. Nearly all peasants were illiterate. The English nobles did learn to read and write. The written language was Latin and Old English,
but depending on where you were, other languages were spoken, including Old English, Cornish,
Gaelic, Pictish, and Welsh. After the Normans invaded, French was spoken
all over England for maybe two centuries, but mostly by the nobles who saw Old English
as the language of the dull-witted. Still, the nobles were no less vulgar when
it came to their actions. As you know, actions speak louder than words. The nobles could not stop feuding, but rather
than kill each other, they’d often send mercenary knights to the villages of their
enemies to massacre the peasants. Dead peasants were a pain in the butt for
the lord, who needed their products and taxes. So, they got their hired thugs to wipe out
an enemy’s serfs. The peasants were often in the middle of a
rich man’s fight back then. Knights weren’t always men of honor, either,
far from it. They were often like the Middle Ages’ mafia,
robbing, extorting, and killing for hire. Chivalry wasn’t dead; it was never alive,
not until codes of honor were later invented in part to stop the knights from slaughtering
poor peasants. One historian said this about the typical
knight, “He’s a hired thug. He’s got horses. He’s got armor. He’s like a heavy tank.” A noble would hire him and tell him to go
over to the land of another noble, burn everything in sight, and kill every last peasant. In one of the chronicles, it’s written that
some English knights went over to Wales and took a thousand kids as slaves. Your average peasant didn’t have weapons
that could do much against men in armor, galloping at them on horses while wielding longswords. These peasants weren’t generally trained
in the art of warfare, and their sticks couldn’t do much against knights that had experienced
killing in the Crusades. In 1379, Sir John Arundel and his men rode
into a convent full of nuns. The chronicle says they attacked married women
and widows and carted off the kidnapped nuns to their ship along with their bounty. It says, “It is not easy to describe the
shouting, or the great sorrow, the lamentation and the floods of tears at that time amongst
the women who had boarded the ships.” They should have been scared because when
a storm threatened the ship, the men threw the 60 nuns over the side, as the chronicle
says, “to be eaten by the fish and sea monsters.” These were terrible men who never thought
twice about exploiting their power against the most vulnerable people. Knights had to be paid, of course. There was something called the Knights Service,
which consisted of a knight being given some land as long as he promised to serve his overlord
in times of war or conflict. Knights sometimes charged a “knight's fee,”
which could also be land or resources such as rivers or mines. Sure, they ran the risk of annoying a high
noble or a king, such as when some knights got on the wrong side of Phillip the Fair
in France. Now, that’s an ironic name if ever there
was one, at least in light of what we’re about to tell you. Philip was one of the people that persecuted
the Knights Templar, the monastic military order that got too big for its boots and had
way too much money in some people’s eyes. He burned their feet over flames, making them
confess to corruption and devil worship, and then burned them at the stake. In 1314, he accused two knights of sleeping
with two of his daughters, saying they committed adultery in one of the guard towers around
the city walls of Paris. They were almost certainly framed, but after
torture, they admitted to the affairs and were charged with lèse majesté. The women just had their heads shaved and
were locked up in a prison, but the men were castrated, flayed, or, some accounts say,
broken on the wheel. The Dark Ages were all about power, and the
knights, while often slaughterers of peasants, were always at risk themselves. There was no safe place in this hierarchy
of madness, not even at the top. Philip’s son, Louis X of France, the next
king of France and one of the early adopters of tennis, was possibly poisoned. Kings were always at risk, just as peasants
and knights, and clerics were. If life wasn’t hard enough for the peasants,
disease was rampant. In the villages, there weren’t any sewage
systems. Usually, peasants would either go for their
poops out in the field, or they’d fill up a chamber pot and then dump the contents in
a hole they’d dug. In the towns where there were more people,
this could create quite a stink, even though there were rudimentary sewage systems such
as underground channels. Rats were everywhere, which is why the worst
pandemic in human history happened from 1346 to 1353. This was the Black Death when the bubonic
plague killed 75–200 million people from Western Eurasia to North Africa, about half
the total population of Eurasia. In London, there was a return of the plague
in 1360 and 1363, killing about 20% of the population. In 1369, another bout of plague took out 10–15%
of Londoners. Imagine if you had to deal with all this plus
a bad harvest or two, and then one day, someone told you that you had to go fight in a war
because your king had beef with another king? This kind of thing was par for the course
in the Dark Ages. It’s not surprising that some people were
into playing murder football and dancing themselves to death. A monarch would issue a “writ of military
summons,” which would be sent out to all the nobles in his country. They usually didn’t have to fight, but they’d
have to get their serfs on board. The peasants were sometimes told they had
no choice but to go, although in some cases, the lord or noble might offer rewards for
their participation. Again, that depended on their level of serfdom. Either way, these peasants were rarely given
much training. They usually had to buy their own sword and
shield. They were, in fact, quite a rabble, although
the highly skilled knights would have mercenaries on board as well as skilled archers and longbowmen
to supplement the troops. In England, it was seen as everyone’s duty
to serve for at least 40 days, but that was obviously insufficient when campaigns went
on for a while. This is why England started to train a professional
army. These men fought in the Hundred Years’ War
with France, which started in 1337. The question is, how did the King even know
who was available to fight? It’s not like he had the internet or could
phone someone for information about his subjects. As we’ve told you, the Normans conquered
England. When they did, William the Conqueror became
king. William set about getting rid of the Anglo-Saxon
aristocracy. He wanted castles built all over England. He had the Tower of London built. He wanted his knights to have armies ready. Then in 1085, he ordered his men to find out
who owned land and how many peasants were on each bit of land. Taxing people was made much easier this way,
as was amassing armies. This became the Domesday Book we’ve mentioned. The 13,000 records in this book show us that
most people lived in small towns and villages. London was the largest place, with a population
of just 10,000. Winchester was the second largest, with only
6,000 people. But these towns were big enough for life to
get chaotic from time to time, so there had to be some kind of law and order. There was no police, so when every male reached
the age of 12, he had to join something called a tithing. A tithe translates as one-tenth, which was
the amount everyone was supposed to give to the church. The age of 12 back then was the age a person
was considered a grown-up. Remember, most folks died young, so at 12,
you were a man or woman of the world. All ten men in the tithing agreed to a system
called a Frankpledge, which said if any one of the men breaks the law, it’s up to the
other guys in the group to make things right. Everyone was their brothers’ keeper. The women, plus the clergy and the more well-off
freemen, were not part of this system. The lords, of course, and the knights and
clergy were a law unto themselves much of the time. If someone was the victim of a crime, they
were supposed to raise the “hue and cry,” which meant to sound the alarm. It was the responsibility of the rest of the
villagers to go after the person. If they didn’t, they might look guilty. Often, the person was caught and handed some
rough justice, a severe beating by the mob, or a swift execution. There were criminal trials, though, just not
the kind most of us today would think are very fair. Starting in the early 1000s, under King Cnut,
there was a law that said “men of good repute” were able to clear their names just by swearing
an oath. “I swear to God, I didn’t cut off that
man’s head and throw it to my pigs.” Ok, he must be innocent because he said he
was. That’s how it sometimes went. Other people of a certain repute could get
10 people to swear to their good name. These people were called the compurgators,
and if indeed the ten said the guy was innocent, he was innocent. If the alleged criminal could not tick those
boxes, he or she often had a trial by ordeal. There was the ordeal by fire. The person had to hold an iron bar that was
glowing red after being pulled out of a fire. They had to keep hold until their skin was
burnt. After that, their wounds were bandaged. If three days later, when the bandages were
removed, the wounds had healed, the person was proven to be innocent. God had obviously intervened and saved them. That, or they either were young and had a
great natural healing propensity, or their iron bar had not been heated up enough. Either way, if their hands were blistered
or infected, they often lost their head or were hanged. There was also an ordeal by water, in which
the accused was thrown into a body of water. If they floated, they were guilty, and if
they drowned, they were innocent. A rope was attached to them, and if it sank
below a certain depth, that meant they hadn’t floated, and so were dragged out. As for the floaters, well, the devil was obviously
working in his mysterious ways. This happened to a guy named Ailward after
his neighbor Fulk caught him stealing from his house. He floated after being thrown into the local
pond: guilty. He then had both his eyes gouged out and his
genitals mutilated. This was only for simple theft. But the best one was trial by combat, so at
least the person had a fighting chance of rescuing an innocent verdict. Still, in 1215, King Henry III said these
ordeals were rather backward, especially as one priest always oversaw them. The King said that’s just not right, so
he introduced a jury system - the system England has today. It was quite normal for the person who’d
been executed to be put in a cage that was hung high up where people often congregated. This cage was called a gibbet. The rotting mess inside it was there for children
and adults to see every day. It was a warning to the local population of
what would happen if they broke the law. Throughout English history, there have been
records of complaints from people saying the gibbet was too close to their houses. It wasn’t a nice sight, and it smelled awful. What’s strange is that if you look at the
data from back then, something doesn’t make sense. For instance, in 1202, in the city of Lincoln
in England, there were 114 murders, but that year there were just two executions. On top of that, the records show there were
89 robberies with violence, and 65 people were wounded during fights in the streets
and pubs. Why so few executions? We think you’ll be able to figure that out
as we go along. If you did get executed, the best you could
hope for was something fast. A thief might only be beheaded, which is nothing
when you consider all over Europe for centuries, people were broken on the wheel. This consisted of tying someone to a wheel
and literally smashing their bones to pieces with a cudgel, sometimes making the punishment
go on for as long as possible by avoiding the head. Usually, though, people were hanged, or at
least in London, that was the case. The records show, in 1396, Thomas Heyne stole
from someone in London and was hanged. In 1329, a guy named John in Croydon took
someone’s horse, and he was also hanged. And as you know, if age 12 was considered
an adult, then plenty of young folks were executed for small crimes. Back then, boys and girls as young as 7 could
end up swinging from a rope. In 1212, King John kidnapped 32 Welsh boys,
all sons of nobles. John had them imprisoned in Nottingham castle,
and then for some reason, one day, he took each one up to the rampart and hanged them
one by one. Contemporary text about this states, “The
boys being taken from their play—some screaming, others pleading in vain for mercy—and hanged
on the Castle walls.” The chronicle notes that their screams could
be heard far in the distance. 1212 was a bad year for youngsters. The chronicle states a boy “not yet seven”
was executed in the town of Shrewsbury. His name was Rhys ap Maelgwyn. The stories go on, girls were burned at the
stake, and infants had their “brains dashed” because they might one day make a claim to
the throne. A research paper noted: “Courts imposed the death penalty more and
more often and, by the late Middle Ages, were condemning to death between 0.5 and 1.0% of
all men of each generation, with perhaps just as many offenders dying at the scene of the
crime or in prison while awaiting trial.” The paper states most people were executed
by hanging, but there were also deaths by drawing and quartering, breaking on the wheel,
and burning at the stake. Perhaps the most shocking are the cases when
the murderer was buried alive under the casket of the person they killed. One or two out of every 100 men would die
by execution at one point in the Dark Ages. The murder rate during this period was through
the roof. A study undertaken tells us in the 1340s in
England, the murder rate in Oxford was a massive 110 per 100,000 people. Many towns in England had murder rates close
to this. These days, the murder rate in England is
about 1.1 per 100,000, even with all those gangland stabbings the kids can’t seem to
get enough of. The USA’s murder rate is about 6.5 per 100,000. Mexico is about 28.3, and Honduras is 36.3. Sure, there weren’t many people in 1300s
England, but there sure were many people that would slit your throat over an exchange of
glances. In the towns, day-to-day life was an obstacle
course covered with bloody daggers. In most of Western Europe in the late Dark
Ages, the homicide rate was 23 to 56 per 100,000 individuals. From 1300 to 1348, the most common crime was
theft, at 73.5% of all crimes. Murder comprised 18.2% of all crimes, receiving
stolen goods 6.2%, and other crimes, including arson, assault, treason, and counterfeiting
coins, 2.1%. All of these, of course, were punishable by
death. One of the reasons for all these murders was
that people didn’t go anywhere without a knife. That’s why folks could get stabbed playing
football. We guess it was indeed possible to accidentally
run into someone’s knife, just as the chronicle said. If people ate outside, in a tavern, they would
always use their own knives. It’s not polite these days to eat with a
knife. That’s because peasants used to do it. We stopped eating with knives as part of our
so-called Civilizing Process. “Courtesy books” started teaching people
manners in the 12th century, and while most peasants couldn’t read, the rules about
good manners could be passed on verbally. One book tells people, “Speak nicely to
any you see and walk slowly and demurely. Don’t run off and throw stones or sticks
or wrestle with dogs.” It talks about table manners, saying, “Don’t
touch your face or head while you are eating, and keep your knife away from your face. Don’t loosen your belt sitting at the table,
for that is most uncourteous. Don’t burp or fart.” A lot of the book tells people to be polite
to strangers. There was a good reason for this. The past was a place of honor, so even slight
insults could lead to men defending their honor by using extreme violence. It’s said that in 1350, 26% of male nobles
died by murder. From 1300 to 1400, an aristocrat’s life
expectancy was better than a poor person’s, but at 45.4, it wasn’t very good, either. Many died protecting their honor. Still, if they got to 21, their chances of
reaching an older age were greatly increased. We can get a clearer idea of what life was
like thanks to more of those rules that started to surface back then. Steven Pinker’s book “The Better Angels
of Our Nature,” says one rule was, “Don’t foul the staircases, corridors, closets, or
wall hangings with urine and other filth.” That tells you a lot about people back then. Another was don’t pee in front of women
and don’t pee out of the window. A strange one was, “Don’t greet someone
while they are urinating or defecating.” People did that in the streets, of course. As strangers often shared beds back then,
another rule was not to pull anything out from under the bed sheet if something stinks
in there. A small loss of face could lead to extreme
violence, so it was better not to embarrass anyone. If he poops in your shared bed, just leave
the poop alone. Great advice, and we’re sure you’ll follow
it one day. Joking aside, people back then really did
kill each other over nothing. We found a written account from the 1300s
featuring a parish chaplain named William of Wellington. He’d gone to the house of John Cobbler. If you think these names are weird, in England
back then, surnames weren’t really a thing, so you might get called William, that guy
from Wellington. Or, you might get the name of your job, so
John was the cobbler. Today you see many names like this, such as
Smith for the blacksmith. A Butcher was a butcher, a Fletcher, an arrow
maker; people who looked after animals might be called Heard. Back to the account, it said, “On the fifth
day of King Edward,” the parish chaplain of Yelvertoft sent his clerk around to John
Cobbler’s house to buy a candle. The text states, “John would not send it
to him without the money, wherefore William became enraged. And knocking in the door upon him, he struck
John in the front of the head so that his brains flowed forth and he died forthwith.” And this was a man of the cloth whose honor
was only slightly affected. That was not that unusual. An academic journal writing about towns during
this period said people regularly cut off other people’s noses when they’d lost
face in debates or over money. All over medieval Europe, there was this crazy
violence, often over matters that today we’d call trifling. We’ve talked about England today, but Belgium,
Scandinavia, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands all had these insane murder
rates at the end of the Dark Ages. It’s hard to know exactly what the cause
was, but one research paper seemed to suggest most of the murders were over small matters. Unlike today, where most murders are committed
by people who know the victims intimately, stranger-on-stranger murder was the most likely
kind of murder back then. Or, at least, people who didn’t know the
victim very well. The paper added, “Typically, the killing
of family members made up less than 10 percent in medieval societies. In contrast, a large proportion of cases occurred
in situations of conflict between (primarily male) acquaintances, with the offender and
the victim often sharing a similar social background or being neighbors in a rural community.” The evidence shows a lot of these murders
happened in or around taverns. So, booze, often the lubricant that makes
it easier for people to kill today, was doing the same back then. We think the best booze/murder story in the
history of the world happened in Oxford, which you’ll remember had the highest murder rate. Those brainy toffs were certainly hot-tempered,
as were the peasants that shared the same town. On February 10, 1355, some students at Oxford
got a bit too drunk and complained that the ale was not of great quality at a place called
Swindlestock Tavern. The tavern owner then apparently used “stubborn
and saucy language,” and one of the students threw a drink in his face. A scuffle ensued between the owner, his buddies
and the students, which quickly turned into a knife fight that progressed into a riot. Cudgels and bows and arrows joined the mass
of knives. What started as a simple bar brawl went on
for three days. Peasants from the countryside arrived in town,
ransacking the students’ quarters, often killing the occupants who had nothing to do
with the fight. Screams could be heard as rooms were set on
fire. A cleric was even scalped! Some 63 people from the university were murdered,
as were about 30 peasants. Bodies floated in the river, buried in cesspits,
and littered the streets. The scholars that survived had fled, leaving
their burning town behind them. The peasants often hated those students, 5000
of whom had moved into the town of Oxford to study. In fact, one of the reasons the University
of Cambridge was established in 1209 was that locals had lynched two scholars at Oxford. Other scholars thought, fudge this, let’s
start a place in a new town. In the 13th and 14th centuries, such murderous
violence was said to be “commonplace” at these institutions of higher learning. But it wasn’t always about envy. Students killed students; scholars killed
scholars. In 1314, 39 students at Oxford were murdered
when two faculties got into a disagreement. If you visit Oxford today, you’ll find mostly
posh kids hanging around, and despite the odd envious local giving them a hard time,
it’s a town of peaceful splendor. So, what does this tell us about the Dark
Ages? Maybe there’s no better example of the sheer
savageness of the times. Earlier, we told you about a town where lots
of people committed murder, and yet not many were handed a death sentence. The same happened in Oxford. Barely a person was even arrested. There’s an explanation for this. You see, stealing from the rich was the worst
thing you could do, just as robbing banks today gets you in lots of trouble even if
no one is hurt. The elites back then protected themselves,
so stealing from someone’s pond could get you hanged. Killing a noble could get you broken on the
wheel, but killing another peasant was sometimes not viewed as a serious crime. Even students killing students was a matter
of honor, a fair fight. As a researcher pointed out, “Homicide was
regarded with lenience if it was perceived as the result of passion or occurred in defense
of honor. Only the most premeditated cases of murder
invariably required the death penalty.” Still, it was regarded as acceptable if your
neighbor had feuded with you and you stabbed him to death. This is just how things were often sorted
out. It sounds more normal when you consider war
as a constant feature in people’s lives. The peasants had it tough, but in England,
their lives were made much harder because of the Hundred Years’ War we mentioned earlier. Those Lords and their knights had to provide
armies, which meant more taxes for the poor – a story as old as time. After the Black Death in the 1340s, so many
peasants had died that they started to think their labor was worth more money. Instead, they were hit with taxes, and this
all kicked off what is called the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. They’d had enough. They wanted an end to serfdom, which, as you
know, was damn close to slavery. They wanted the king gone, too. It dawned on them they were the majority in
town; 85 to 90 percent of people were of the peasant class. Sometimes only armed with sticks, they went
on the rampage, killing on their way, heading towards 14-year-old King Richard II in London. With his forces either on campaigns abroad
or up north, he did what any young king would do and hid in the Tower of London. The peasants were furious. Even those who weren’t unfree serfs had
been getting shafted and if they complained, new laws left them branded with a hot iron
or imprisoned. This was labor rights in the 1300s. With uprisings all over England, there was
panic among the noble classes. Rumors spread that these peasants were going
to kill their masters. That’s why under the strict conspiracy laws,
people were hanged just because they’d been accused of getting together and plotting. That’s what they did in the end, walking
into towns and dragging nobles from their houses, executing them in the street. Now, this wasn’t just a matter of murder
for honor, it was rebellion. The peasants said they were uninterested in
stealing things, as the nobles had accused them of. They shouted we are only looking for “truth
and justice” and we are not “thieves and robbers.” They eventually met with the king, who was
surrounded by 200 knights in full armor. The peasants told him of their demands. Their leader, Wat Tyler, said he just wanted
what was fair. He called the king “brother” and said
he meant no harm. He explained that the peasants just wanted
more rights, something better than starvation, war, and taxes. The king told Tyler that the rebels should
“have all that he could fairly grant.” It was a wonderful moment; cheers rang out
among the crowd. Justice, at last…But then, one of the king’s
men insulted Tyler, which led to Tyler attacking the Lord Mayor of London. He was stabbed numerous times and died trying
to escape on his horse. His body was taken to Smithfield, the place
of public executions in London. On the orders of the king, Tyler’s head
was cut off. It was subsequently paraded around London
for all to see and, as was customary then and for centuries to come, stuck on a spike
on London Bridge. This happened to five men, one of whom was
a priest whose only crime was saying things such as:
“From the beginning, all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude
came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men.” His body parts traveled all over England to
remind people of what happens to rebels and supporters of rebels. The message was clear: This is what you get
when you mess with us. The death of Wat Tyler pretty much ended the
revolt. Those who’d taken part were now in serious
trouble. The King, of course, took back all the promises
he’d given about reform and justice. Nonetheless, the rebellion was one of the
most important events in European history. The peasants had fought back against the elites. This is what nobles all over Europe had feared. The brainwashed masses, with their conditioned
love of the King and church, were not so stupid, and it seemed they had a limit. Still, the King ordered 4,000 soldiers to
travel around England and find the other leaders. Many were executed without trial. From London to Yorkshire, hundreds were killed. Some of the ringleaders were brought back
to London to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. This consisted of hanging the man but not
until dead, then hacking off his manhood, disemboweling him, relieving him of his head,
and severing his limbs from his torso. But something had changed in England, just
as things were changing elsewhere in Europe. These rural poor had support from skilled
artisans, parts of the wealthier communities, holy men, and even some elites. They saw it as a fight for freedom, and indeed,
the feudal system was viewed as not much better than slavery for many people. The rebellion might not have been a success,
but in the bigger scheme of things, its ripples led to significant changes in the years to
come. So, the Dark Ages were violent. There was little to no justice. People in the street were uncivilized, and
the murder rate was sky-high. Could it be any worse? Yes, is the answer. You could get sick, and we aren’t just talking
about lepers walking around towns ringing their bells so people knew to stay out of
their way. Regular illness was no joke. Being treated was sometimes more hellish than
being left to die. One of the reasons it’s called the Dark
Ages is because, in general, a lot of that great work done by the Greeks and Romans was
lost in much of Western Europe. The Medieval Period saw quite a lot of regression,
which saw many of the advances made in antiquity being replaced with superstition and outright
barbarity. As the Islamic world was conquering parts
of Europe, it was also translating Greek and Roman texts, becoming much more advanced than
backwaters like the British Isles. The Dark Age wasn’t as backward as people
have made out, but there’s no doubt that the Islamic nations from the 8th century to
the 13th century had what’s called a “Golden Age.” Science, mathematics, and medicine improved
when the Muslims translated the texts of the great powers they defeated. Back in little old England, the Roman roads
were decaying, and there was little to no education for the majority of people who,
by and large, were illiterate. Meanwhile, the Muslims developed algebra,
trigonometry, and geometry. The great antiquity scientists and astronomers
were translated into Arabic. Medical men, after reading the works of Greek
and Roman physicians, thought about what we now call a nervous system. They applied this knowledge and improved upon
it. The Muslims built hospitals and developed
pharmacology. They conducted surgeries unknown in Western
Europe. They were doing this as the Christians embraced
faith healing and miracles over expert surgery. As they had their Golden Age, peasants in
England and the rest of Europe relied mostly on herbal remedies for sickness. The leading causes of death included the plague,
but also tuberculosis, and simple infections. They had few answers to this. Lack of food led to malnutrition and famine,
and as you know, warfare and street violence took a lot of people. Records show that the sweating sickness also
killed many, which today we call the flu. Dysentery, diphtheria, typhoid, smallpox,
and leprosy also took the lives of many in medieval Europe. There was no such thing as madness or not
in the way we think about mental health now. When people’s moods were chronically downcast
or they became hysterical, it was the devil that was to blame. If available, people were sent to visit holy
men for diseases of the mind, who, it’s said, often performed miracles. They didn’t, but the fact this was said
denotes how backward these times were. To improve the mood, bloodletting was advised,
or another form of purging, such as being made to throw up. If that didn’t work, a priest might tell
someone they needed to whip themselves every night before bed, a process known as self-flagellation. Now and again, the Crusaders would return
home victorious with information about the science and medicine of the Islamic world,
but this didn’t get as far as the villages. A local healer could do much for conditions
such as gangrene either. People knew that once that set in, death was
on the way unless amputation was performed. If the unfree peasants on the land were lucky,
their lord might bring in a doctor to take care of this. Often this loss of a limb would be a “flap
amputation,” which consisted of cutting around the skin and the muscle with a knife
and then pulling back the skin so the bone was exposed. Of course, these people had no idea about
germs, so sterilizing knives was not a priority. They’d then saw through the bone without
any pain relief being administered. To cauterize the wound, they’d often use
a hot iron. Death was common. Extreme pain was guaranteed. In towns across parts of Dark Ages Europe,
the local hairdresser often performed this bloody operation. They were also the ones who removed your teeth
since even though they were illiterate, had the tools and experience. These barbers started working sometime in
the 10th century, often in local monasteries. They were in high demand during periods of
war, which was most of the time. There were some advanced physicians, though,
such as Henri de Mondeville, who, in the 13th century, wrote a book titled “La Chirurgie”
(Surgery). He was one of the best around. He studied the works of the Greek physicians
we mentioned before, but in France and Italy, where he did his work, peasants certainly
weren’t his main customer base. In one part of the book, he gives advice on
how to remove arrows from the body - a common occurrence in warfare. He said:
“As I tried to pull it out through the wound of entry, I failed to recognize that it had
small barbs – it was an English arrow – which had caught the muscle, and I could neither
unhook it nor extract the arrow. I had to make an incision over the point to
remove the metal piece.” He said when they get one in the neck, there’s
not much you can do. His exact words were, “Call a priest,”
just before you pull the arrow out because the bleeding will kill the guy. If the patient gets worried at the sight of
his own blood, his advice is to give him some “bread soaked in spiced wine.” People who survived surgeries should also
be plied with wine, the best there is, he said, and then given healthy food such as
“pheasants, partridges, meadow birds with narrow beaks, hens eggs boiled in their shells.” He talked about food when he gave advice for
brain surgery, saying, “I often have removed bits of the brain which adhered to arrows
which I have extracted from wounded heads; brain tissue resembles soft white cheese.” Trepanning was common back then, too, if there
was bleeding on the brain and pressure. This was the process of drilling into the
skull to remove pressure or, in some cases, to remove the demon that had entrenched itself
in the person’s brain. Have a panic attack, a bout of depression,
an epileptic fit, anything deemed strange, and the next thing you know, someone was drilling
into your skull trying to find a little devil. Thank God for the Age of Reason, a time of
great risk for those people who spoke out against such superstitious nonsense. Rationality made a comeback, but it also wasn’t
pretty at times. Now you need to watch “Evil Punishments
Designed to be Worse Than Death.” Or, see how things went wrong in modern times,
“Why Mao Zedong Was The Most Brutal Tyrant.”
