What life in medieval Europe was really like

A time of innovation, philosophy, and legendary works of art: the realities of the medieval period (500 to 1500 C.E.) in Europe may surprise you.

Many know the years before the Renaissance and Enlightenment that followed as Europe’s “Dark Ages,” a time of backward, slovenly, and brutal people who were technologically primitive and hopelessly superstitious.

But it turns out the Dark Ages was anything but. Here are four myths about the medieval world it’s time we moved past.

Myth: Medieval people were filthy

Sure, it would take until the 19th century for the germ theory of disease to overtake the concept of humors and “miasmas” that could damage human health. But the common image of medieval people as slovenly, unwashed, and lacking hygiene is false.

In fact, both indoor and outdoor bathing were beloved in Europe. People not only made and used soap at home, but they frequented bathhouses—some public, some private, some merely fronts for brothels.

They even had elaborate rituals around handwashing before meals, especially in aristocratic circles. While peasants washed their hands, too, members of the aristocracy used lavish lavatories where they washed their hands as minstrels serenaded them. If dining with the king, they would wait for the monarch to publicly bathe his hands before sitting—proof of his powerful status.

Modern historians believe that handwashing only faded during the supposedly more enlightened 16th century, when the fork began replacing diners’ washed fingers at Renaissance tables.

Myth: Medieval people believed the world was flat

A myth persists that during the Middle Ages, the unenlightened believed Earth was flat and worried that ships might even fall off the planet’s edge.

That’s patently false: People knew the planet was a sphere as far back as ancient Greece (12th to 9th centuries B.C.), and had relatively complex astronomical and planetary knowledge by the time Christopher Columbus made his voyage to the Americas in 1492.

So why does the myth persist to this day? Blame Washington Irving, a 19th-century American writer whose fantastical biography of Columbus was so well-loved that the myth of medieval flat-earthers stuck.

Myth: Medieval Europe was homogenous and provincial

Though travel was rudimentary compared to the modern age, racial, gender and even sexual diversity could be found throughout medieval society.

One 2019 study, for example, used DNA from bones in a Black Death cemetery in London to reveal a more diverse city than previously thought. The analysis of 41 people revealed seven different places of origin, people of African ancestry, and people with dual white European and black African heritage.

Nor were queer people absent from Middle Age societies. Though the Catholic Church taught that homosexuality was sinful, attitudes toward same-sex desire varied. Historians point to evidence of gender nonconformity and close same-sex relationships in medieval artwork and literature.

And not all medieval women were confined to domestic duties. In fact, some women became leaders in war, musicians, scientists, scribes, and political power players—though education was still off-limits to most women.

Myth: the medieval period was a 'dark' time of irrationality

The so-called “Dark Ages” is a myth historians have spent years trying to disprove. The myth seems to stem from some authors’ use of “dark” to refer to everything from a 14^th-century poet’s complaints about the quality of local literature to a 17th-century historian’s failed attempt to find historical sources from centuries earlier.

Despite the era’s dark reputation, though, everything from scholarship to art and technology thrived during the Middle Ages. The age produced everything from the first eyeglasses to mechanical timekeeping, the heavy plow, and moveable type—three inventions that would enable the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. Gunpowder weapons revolutionized warfare forever, while mapmakers managed to create astonishingly accurate maps of the world.

Meanwhile, the formation of guilds allowed artists to rise from the peasantry into roles as coveted craftspeople, while everything from illuminated manuscripts to tapestry and sculpture thrived during the era. Heironymus Bosch, a Dutch painter known for his outlandish religious paintings, and Giotto di Bondone, whose frescoes and architecture added artistic cachet to Italy’s Gothic cathedrals, are just a few of the medieval artists who became famous names in their day.

In fact, medieval people set the stage for the Renaissance. They even had three of their own, creating an explosion of art, scientific innovation, and a renewed world of academia.

And that’s just Europe. During the thousand-year span of medieval times, China perfected the compass and invented navigation. African kingdoms at the height of their power engaged in complex trade, while civilizations flourished across the Americas. The Islamic world “was the envy of the world” for centuries because of its advanced learning, culture, science, medicine, and statecraft, writes historian Rabia Umar Ali.