TOUGH CHOICES: MEDIEVAL MEME EDITION

You're going back to the Middle Ages. Would you prefer take an electric piano or a gun?

Quick plug: Season 2 of my podcast This Is History launched this week! It carries on from where Season 1 left off, and the story is all about Richard the Lionheart. I’d love it if you gave it a listen - it’s available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and pretty much anywhere else you get podcasts.

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My friend Codpiece Sally posted a medieval meme. She likes to do this sometimes, and she is by no means alone. Memes are one of the ways that medieval history is slyly conquering the cultural consciousness of all humanity. (This Substack is another, natch.)

My normal reaction to medieval internet memes - you know, like the dippy marginalia snail or the tree full of wangs - is probably about what yours is. A flicker of a smile, then onto the next thing. No shade on memes or those who post them. That is what the internet has done to our brains. Is normal.

This meme, however, was different. Ladies and gentledorks, I engaged. 

Arguably I engaged too much, because not only did I text Sally about it so we could have a conversation based on the issues the meme threw up, I also have been thinking about it all week.

And you know what they say. A problem shared is now your problem too. Which is why I want to spend a bit of time chewing this meme over here.

More seriously, I also want to see if we can use this case study to dig around a little in the assumptions and thought-tropes of what squarejohn academics call ‘medievalism’: a broad field that includes not only scholarly study of the Middle Ages, but the life of that period in broader cultural mindsets.

So take what follows on any level you like.

Then you can then chat about it in the comments. Or just click onto the next thing. 

Here we go then. 

Okay. This is the meme. I guess if I’ve seen this, you’ve seen it too. Perhaps you already have some fully reasoned-out idea of what you want to take with you. Perhaps that choice is a hill you’re prepared to die on. 

What I don’t propose to do here is tell you my final decision and then reason back from it to demonstrate why, yet again, I Am Right.

Instead, it seems more interesting to take each of these items one by one and figure out whether it would have any utility at all to a medieval time traveller, and/or what they tell us about what we think we know about the medieval world. 

First up, the premise.

You’re being sent back in time to the medieval era.

I hate to say it, but UGH. You’re being sent back in time to what was that? ‘The medieval era’?

Put aside the basic tautology of ‘medieval era’ and we still have a significant problem in the terms, which is going to affect quite significantly what we think we might need if we go there. For buried in this premise is a question we must answer before we can go a single step further:

When exactly was the Middle Ages?

There are almost as many answers to this as there are medievalists.

In my book Powers & Thrones I defined the Middle Ages as running from the sack of Rome 410AD to the sack of Rome 1527. I’m perfectly happy to argue the toss on those bookends, but wherever we end up, we’re probably talking about a thousand years of history, the beginning, middle and end of which look radically different to each other. 

That’s a long time, and in this context - as well as the more general context of medieval studies per se - that really matters. Twice as much time separates the beginning and end of the Middle Ages as separates the medieval world from our own.

It’s like talking about ‘the modern period’ and defining it as running from the accession of Henry VIII to the year 2509 - when the Earth is hotter than Mercury and what remains of its former bounty is presided over by AI robot overlords.

The point is, although the idea of ‘medieval times’ feels unitary and generic across time, it really isn’t. Technologies, beliefs, geopolitics, climate, etc all changed massively during the Middle Ages. The world of Late Antiquity, during which time Rome was falling and barbarians were migrating and Islam was being born, bore precious little resemblance to that of Columbus and Da Vinci and Richard III.

What I’m saying is that in order to even engage with the apparently simply question this meme poses, we must submit to an entirely confected fixed-point vision of a generic Middle Ages, in which the Earth was flat, people were universally religious, parochial and dumb, and all novelty was by definition the work of Satan. A Hollywood version, in other words. (I suppose this is telegraphed by the Delorian.)

It ought to go without saying that in reality no such Middle Ages ever existed. 

What, then, do we do? In lieu of not engaging with this task at all I see three options. 

a) run each of the items in this meme through the test of 5-8 different moments and places in the Middle Ages and assess their potential varying perception and effect at each of these times

b) admit defeat and just answer this question insofar as it pertains to a date which we think of as ‘quintessentially medieval’. For my money that’s roughly the year 1300, in southern England or the Welsh marches. (The image of the castle above probably supports that assumption.) 

c) stfu and get on with it

I’ll go with b) and c).

Let’s move on. Starting from the top left, here are my thoughts on each of these items.

Dab Pen with 5 carts

Otherwise known as a vape, or - according to my teenage daughter - a ‘tonk’ or ‘chong’. (I realise I sound old but I don’t smoke tampon applicators.)

So, what use would this have in the Middle Ages?