In the Middle Ages, people did not live well, and this is a fact. There are enough stories telling about the level of medicine of that time and all sorts of terrible things that happened long before you and I were born. If only for this reason, we should be glad that you and I live in the modern world, where there is adequate medicine and high technologies that allow us to live in comfort. But do not believe everything that is told to us about the Middle Ages, because much of what we hear is nothing more than just myths that we are in a hurry to debunk.
Religiousness hindered technical progress
Many believe that strict religious beliefs, along with diseases like the plague in the Middle Ages, prevented scientific thought and progress from developing. This era is even called "Dark Ages".
In fact, thanks to the medieval church, curricula appeared that included mathematics and other sciences. The Bible was rethought as a guide to understanding the world, and the gap between the ancient level of science and the current one was narrowing. In the Middle Ages, typography, water and windmills, glasses, and a magnetic compass were invented. Many of these discoveries involved the church in one way or another. So religion did not hinder progress, and even accelerated it.
There was no dental care
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Dentistry is still considered a form of torture, so it seems that in the Middle Ages it belongs. However, we forget that our ancestors did not have such access to sugar, so their teeth were much healthier than ours. At the same time, scientists examined the jaws of people from the Middle Ages and found that they cleaned and removed their teeth using professional tools.
In the early 1400s, the Italian professor Giovanni de Arcoli wrote a treatise on dental care, where he proved that the main modern methods of dentists were used then. He even explained how to preserve a rotting tooth by filling it with gold.
Women were tortured with a chastity belt
Everyone knows the myth of warriors who, before a long march, left metal shackles like cowards on their wives, so as not to doubt their loyalty. In fact, the image of the chastity belt appeared in 1405 as a joke. The author of the picture had in mind the ancient Roman wedding tradition of tying the bride's waist with a belt as a sign of chastity.
Everyone thought the Earth was flat
A common misconception is that the inhabitants of the "Dark Ages" considered the Earth to be flat, and it was only in the Age of Enlightenment that people's views changed. In fact, people began to realize that the Earth is not a disk, already in the sixth century BC. And the writer Washington Irving is to blame for the widespread modern myth, in his "History of the Life and Travels of Christopher Columbus" who declared that the people of the pre-Columbian era considered the Earth to be flat.
The first night's right was business as usual
The right of the first night is the right of an influential person or representative of authority to deprive the bride of his vassal of her vassal's identity. This is a frequent plot of films and books about the Middle Ages. In fact, there is no evidence of this tradition, and for the first time the myth appeared in the Sumerian legends about Gilgamesh.
Women sat at home and took care of children
In typical films about the Middle Ages, women do nothing but give birth, cook and die young. In fact, in the Middle Ages, women did not disdain male work and were full members of society. They took care of the harvest, worked in industry - from weaving factories to confectionery factories, ran family shops, taverns and hotels. Even the main positions in power were available to them: women became queens and ruled monasteries - centers of medieval life. When the population of London was cut in half after the plague, the widows took over entrepreneurship, including brewing.
People only lived to be 30
It is clear where this myth came from: life in the Middle Ages was much more dangerous than today. But there is a difference between life expectancy and life expectancy. The first number is the life of a particular person, and the second is an average statistical indicator, and it was equal to only 30 years due to the high infant mortality rate.
Imagine a family of two parents and four children. The first child dies shortly after birth, the second lives to 70, and the parents die at 35 and 60 years old. Thus, the average life expectancy in this family is 41 years. But this does not mean that after 40 everyone died en masse. If a person survived in childhood, then he could well live up to 70 years.
Because of the dirty water everyone drank wine and beer
In fact, medieval people did not drink as much alcohol as we think. Most cities were then built near large sources of fresh water. Only industrial facilities that worked with dyes were dangerous, but their managers were forbidden to dump waste into water bodies. So everything was fine with the water. Beer was also loved then, but it was much weaker than modern, and they drank it mainly to quench their thirst during hard work.
Medieval medicine was sheer madness
It seems that the doctors of that time were completely inadequate and could saw off a part of a person's skull to rid him of the evil spirit. In fact, medical knowledge was pretty reasonable. We even now use some modified medieval practices - for example, to heal burns or kill viruses. It was in the Middle Ages that they came up with the idea of examining physiological fluids in order to diagnose a person.
People were tortured by the "Iron Maiden"
The word "Middle Ages" immediately recalls torture, and with it - a device called "Iron Maiden". Fortunately, this is just a fiction. The Virgin was first written about in the 18th century, referring to the execution of 1515, although most of the stories about medieval torture date back to later times, and there is practically no real evidence of them.