Mairi Ulfsdottir
01-07-2003, 08:44 AM
I just read a quote in the preface of a book that I'm reading, that really is a good reminder of how lucky we are to be playing with a fun/fantasy version of the middle-ages/ renaissance instead of actually living then!
The author is Sophy Burnham and she writes in her book "The Treasures of Montsegur" (and she is referencing the 1300's)
"The times were harsh, the speech and attitudes so foreign to our modern comprehension, so violent, cruel, and bloody, that if one of us were somehow sent back in a time machine she would lose her mind. Lives were short and brutal.
People did not wash often; they knew nothing of cleanliness. Their rooms were incredibly hot, with roaring fires kept blazing even in summer, and their many layers of clothing were rarely removed. They stank. They were filled with fear: they distrusted the night, the dark, witches, wolves, werewolves, demons, and anything unknown (and this at a time when everything was unknown). They were afraid of one another, and especially mistrustful of anything or anyone who lay beyond their own village.
....By the full Middle Ages, women were so little valued that their births and deaths went largely unrecorded... 73 percent of women died in childbirth"
Wow! makes one appreciate modern times and conveniences!!
Mairi
The author is Sophy Burnham and she writes in her book "The Treasures of Montsegur" (and she is referencing the 1300's)
"The times were harsh, the speech and attitudes so foreign to our modern comprehension, so violent, cruel, and bloody, that if one of us were somehow sent back in a time machine she would lose her mind. Lives were short and brutal.
People did not wash often; they knew nothing of cleanliness. Their rooms were incredibly hot, with roaring fires kept blazing even in summer, and their many layers of clothing were rarely removed. They stank. They were filled with fear: they distrusted the night, the dark, witches, wolves, werewolves, demons, and anything unknown (and this at a time when everything was unknown). They were afraid of one another, and especially mistrustful of anything or anyone who lay beyond their own village.
....By the full Middle Ages, women were so little valued that their births and deaths went largely unrecorded... 73 percent of women died in childbirth"
Wow! makes one appreciate modern times and conveniences!!
Mairi