50 Aspects Of Medieval Times That Are Just Weird Or Horrifying

"CLOAKS! Cloaks are so freakin cool but they went out of style. I wish they weren’t weird today and so rare. Cloaks are so freakin amazing."

"Perpetual soup. Basically, a large pot would always be simmering and food would be tossed in before spoiling. So it was just a large vat of everything simmering non-stop."

user replied: "This is still a Welsh tradition, there are stories in my family of my grandmother running a cowl pot for months on end."

"Fight instead of divorce.

Why waste time on courts and child support? In medieval Germany, if a husband and wife reached a dead end on some important issue, they entered the ring.

The rules, of course, equalized the forces of men and women. In the ring, the man was in a hole, and one hand was tied behind his back so that he could strike with only one hand. And the wife was given a bag of coal, with which she struck.

Whoever wins the fight (inflicts serious injury or the defeated one asks for mercy) is, therefore, right in the dispute."

"Duels over a bride at a wedding."

IronBatNaz replied: "That leads to my favorite trivia of weddings, where the best man was not necessarily your best mate, but the best duellist you knew, in order to help fight over the bride at a wedding."

"This was a love potion recipe from the 10th century:

A woman will lay a cloth on the ground and cover it in grain. She will then strip her clothes off and cover her body in honey. After that, she will roll around on the cloth and try to get covered in grain.

Afterward, she will get up and take the grain stuck to her body over to the mill and ground that into flour. She will then use that flour to bake bread and give it to her husband to eat."

"The name Lance isn't popular in this day and age, but back in medieval times people were called Lancelot."

"Women plucking their hairline to make their forehead bigger. In the C13th, there was this whole European aesthetic about women's sexy, sexy foreheads. So women would pluck their hair to make the forehead bigger and sexier."

"Sleeping with your entire family in one bed.

Or if you are a king, sleeping in the same bed with a rival king to cement your friendship and respect for each other, as brothers.

Privacy was just not really a thing in the middle ages!"

"Having rules about what colors and what type of clothing and hats you could wear, based on your occupation or social level."

"Boiling fruit before you eat it.

People in medieval times thought raw fruit was bad for you - so they boiled their fruit before eating it. Boiling removes vitamin C from fruit. This habit is thought to be one of the reasons why there were high rates of scurvy in medieval times. One of the symptoms of scurvy is hallucinations. Scurvy-induced hallucinations are thought to be one of the reasons why so many people in medieval times were documented to have had religious visions. LPT - if you want to see Jesus, stop ingesting vitamin C. Possible side effects include loss of teeth, bleeding gums, aforementioned hallucinations, suppression of immune system, and death."

"A barber doing surgery."

showMeYourPitties10 replied: "It was more like a surgeon was also doing haircuts."

"A doctor taste-testing urine."

AngelFox1 replied: "This is how they determined if you were diabetic."

"Animal courts. By far the most serial offenders were pigs, accused and convicted of chewing off body parts and even eating children. Most were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging or being burned at the stake. In 1386, a convicted pig was dressed in a waistcoat, gloves, drawers, and a human mask for its execution."

"Carrying a sword."

Farnsworthson replied: "More like not having enough money to be able to afford a sword. A decent sword cost several months' wages for the average man."

"From an American context (and possibly other places too), the amount of time off work in Medieval times would be utterly bizarre compared to now. The idea that the peasantry toiled dawn to dusk in the fields before dying of exhaustion and plague at age 45 is incorrect.

Farmers worked the land when it needed work, and the calendar dictates that schedule. Festivals, harvests, Religious holidays, and everyday life took up more time than work did. We've disillusioned ourselves into thinking that our ancestors lived to work so we should too."

"The hue and cry. Literally shouting that someone stole something and having the whole village chase after them."

clarkjedi asked: "I mean... Have any better ideas for when you get robbed in a public place? Sounds like a sound idea to me."

theminef replied: "But imagine getting wrongly accused and getting lynched by a handful of peasants."

"Public baths. Not on the same scale as they were in Rome, but it was still pretty common to have a bathhouse in medieval Germany and surrounding places to bathe in a group in a large tub of hot, fragrant water, called a "Zuberbad" in German. Now everyone's all hung up on nudity. Even among friends, so it's way less common (although you can still enjoy a public Zuber bath at medieval markets and renaissance fairs in Germanic countries)."

"Sleeping twice.

In medieval times life effectively revolved around the sun. But particularly in the winter, there was far too much time in the night to fill with just sleeping. It was still common for people to go to sleep at dusk, after a hard day's work. But they would wake up in the middle of the night and do something (chat with the neighbors, have sex in front of the whole family, have a snack, etc. Then you'd go back to bed for your second sleep, waking up with the sun."

"Assuming that most women you meet can't read.

Assuming that most men you meet either can't read or can also read Latin."

"Gruesome executions that took a while to actually kill someone.

Seriously medieval people, what the hell is it with sentencing people to be burned at the stake or crucified or drawn-and-quartered?

A swift beheading was the most benevolent way to kill someone in the old days but not widely practiced as it turns out."