Going Medieval

No, “the Church” did not kill Joan of Arc, you credulous dullards

So you know how a lot of the time my blogs are inspired by stuff I saw on twitter that made me angry? Well, because of all the incipient fascism I just haven’t been on twitter very much any more, which has been extremely good for the blood pressure. I do, however, be scrolling over on Insta, which as a general rule of thumb is a nice thing cuz I mostly get served socialist memes and then some cat videos. A+ stuff. No notes.

However, because of the memes I like, occasionally I am served a miss and one such of those was this:

You are not, in fact, the granddaughter of the witches they couldn’t burn

Say you are me (sorry about that) and you are minding your own business online, just trying to survive in a world of unrelenting horror when suddenly you are served an ad. Because of the dark magic of the algorithms and ad service providers, the ads are being tailored to me based on things I have read, or purchased, or allowed my eyes to linger on for a little too long. Maybe it has figured out that I am mates with a bunch of the people who appeared in the Witch podcast. It has certainly gleaned that I am a woman, I tend to read things about history, and am interested in feminist theory more generally.

Hillariously, what that means is I am often served ads for this schlock:

On sickness and conspiracy

I woke up this morning on, October the fifth in the year of our lord 2023, and was not a zombie. This is notable for reasons which will shortly become clear. Because I am not a zombie, this means that I had to get up and do my job. Unfortunately, as a part of said job, a thing that I have to deal with on a frustratingly regular basis is the fairly pervasive idea that medieval Europeans were somehow uniquely stupid. The foolish medieval person is usually proffered in comparison to the total brain genius who is making the statement, who is somehow simultaneously smarter than a medieval person, and yet hasn’t read a single book on medieval history or considered how to make any sort of social analysis at all.

Against Voltaire, or, the shortest possible introduction to the Holy Roman Empire

Long time readers of the blog will remember that I have written, a couple of times, about the Holy Roman Empire in the past before. There’s a few reasons for this – first of all the HRE goes so hard, is very cool, and everyone should know about it. The second is that it’s one of my areas of expertise, given that I work on the Czech lands and they are very very much a part of said HRE. However, I realised recently that I’ve never actually, you know, sat down and explained exactly what the Holy Roman Empire actually is. That’s a problem.

On successor states and websites

This month, like everyone online, I have been watching with a mixture of chagrin and schaudenfruede as platform capitalism digs itself into ever more complex and narrow burrows. By this I mean it’s really funny how a bunch of very rich dudes are breaking stuff online and making worse versions of existing products in response to said breakage. Obviously it is quite amusing to be shown how stupid rich people are, and I very much enjoy it. However, it is also useful for my purposes as a medieval historian in that it serves as a really excellent way of explaining to people what happened in the early medieval period.

On the 11,000 virgin martyrs, iconography, and beauty standards

The other week while wandering around the Cologne Cathedral (shout out to a legend) I came upon an extremely excellent altar in one of the side chapels. Built into its base were several perfectly identical reliquaries showing smiling, beautiful blonde women. I stopped to look at it, because, firstly I was absolutely amazing, and secondly it took me a second to realise what I was looking at. Have a look at her:

On cats

The other night I was mindlessly scrolling about on my phone through Instagram, as one does when they really ought to go to bed but are stuck being entertained instead of resting, when I came upon a video of a cute stripey cat. This ordinarily would not be the sort of thing that you would come to a medieval history blog to read about, I will grant you. However, what seems to have been usually just an account with a cute little cat strayed into my danger zone by claiming that the “Black Plague had a lot to do with cats” and, oh babes, it got worse from there.

On nobility, courtship, moral justification, and sexy tapestries

Last month I had the absolute pleasure of popping over to see friends in Basel to check out Fastnacht, as my lovely Patrons have had to hear about in detail. It was amazing! It was deeply weird! It was a super wonderful thing to be a part of! However, one of the most magical things I came across in Basel was not just the thousands of people playing piccolos or marching around in the dark with lanterns – it was the absolutely overwhelming collection of medieval tapestries that were on display in the Historisches Museum Basel.

On dating advice and men

Of late I have noticed that ever since that one sex trafficker guy got himself arrested there has been a recurrent theme down the old discourse mines: who on the left is talking to young men about relationships?

The answer is of course, friend of the blog BISHUK.com, thanks.

Yet not content with a simple and straightforward answer, the discourse machine moves forward, driven by a bunch of people who have literally never paid attention to who is doing sex and relationships education and therefore think they need to ask a question which has already been answered.

Medieval Women Were a Vital Part of the Workforce. We Can Learn from Them – for Time

Over at Time I have a piece that I wrote about working women in medieval Europe. It covers some of the themes from The Once and Future Sex, and can give you a good idea of what the rest of the book is like.

Do check it out!

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My book, The Once And Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society, is out now.