Middle Ages

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Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history.

We

uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details,

So what was really going on? Was Eleanor the victim of a political conspiracy aimed at destroying her husband? Or was there something more mysterious going on? A genuine belief in magic, prophecy, and the power to change the future.

My guest today is the best-selling novelist Philippa Gregory.

I've spoken to her before on Gone Medieval about real medieval women, so do go revisit that episode if you get the chance.

Philippa's new book, Royal Witch, brings Eleanor Cobham to life.

There were clowns, if you can believe that.

Then Middle Ages court jesters.

Yes, yes, yes.

And then when it comes to America, we get into circus clowns, and that's where clowns really took off here.

The Church of St. Peter, built around the year 1000.

The Church of the Middle Ages was a huge and wealthy landowner, which exerted a powerful influence over people's lives.

And the interiors of its buildings often set a benchmark for the tastes and trends of the era.

In the early 1980s, the white distemper covering the interior walls started to crack and peel.

Yeah.

Yeah, and look at the Middle Ages, Phil.

Some Christians thought we need to withdraw from society, build a monastery, build a castle, and just seek God and pray and fast.

And it sounds really good and righteous and holy, but the people in the towns and the villages nearby often didn't hear the gospel because the church withdrew from society.

Tech people love to compare what's happening now to a Gutenberg revolution – They love to think that a new technology they're creating is going to accelerate historical change.

Just as the Middle Ages were supposedly stagnant, and then we suddenly had a period of acceleration toward modernity, they imagine we're in a period of acceleration toward an exciting science-fictional future that's just around the corner.

And the 19th century, another age of empire, is the other age we strongly associate with technology, via the Industrial Revolution.

There's also the fiction problem.

Now, I know for some of you, if you're familiar with Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Church, if I can speak correctly, Lutheran, a lot of this will sound, okay, you're familiar with it.

But this approach that I'm describing, trying to get you to imagine, It didn't just, a lot of people, well, that's something they did in the Middle Ages.

Oh, no, no, no.

Au contraire.

It did not begin in the Middle Ages.

That is a horrible understanding of church history.

Well, it started with them Catholics.

So for example, in Ireland, people would go and visit the graves of their departed family members and say prayers for them on All Hallows Eve.

There's also a practice called souling, which started in the Middle Ages in England, where people would go around to different parishes and they would ask for what was called soul cakes.

And in exchange for those cakes, they would then offer prayers for the souls of the givers.

However, today, Halloween obviously involves more than just praying for the dead.

This article is in here in large part because it's easy for this to sort of drift into other weirdness.

The weirdness in the 16th century was that a lot of the bishops, the overseers, that's the word in here too, by the Middle Ages, bishops have been elevated above other pastors, and a lot of them were also temporal princes.

and cared more about fighting wars and hunting and taxing their people than they did about the church.

So when you read this article in the Augsburg Confession, the pastoral office is not there for those reasons.