THE MYSTERIOUS MIDDLE AGES

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” The famous line from L.P. Hartley's The Go- Between speaks to the enormous distance that exists between us in the present and those who inhabited the past. That distance is anywhere from 500-1500 years and is magnified by differences in language, culture, and thought. They did things differently in the Middle Ages. And that difference and that distance make everything in the medieval world a bit of a mystery.

By Kathryn Walton

The Middle Ages are mysterious to us today, but life in the Middle Ages was also inherently mysterious. From relics and rituals that could heal and transform to supernatural events and magical occurrences that enticed and were difficult to explain, people in the Middle Ages routinely encountered the enigmatic. Living in the Middle Ages meant living in the midst of mysteries. So today, medievalists face mysteries on every front. Some days they are presented with the challenge of trying to figure out what things that were mysterious then meant in the context of this foreign past; other days they must try to figure out even everyday things from the medieval world using fragmentary or damaged material. Medievalists must try to understand the mysteries of the medieval world while simultaneously wading their…

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Medieval World Culture & Conflict (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 7 - 2023

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