Dan Snow's History Hit - A Medieval Education

Episode Date: September 13, 2020

Eleanor Janega joined me on the pod to discuss the educational institutions of the medieval period. We talk about student riots in Paris, the role of the clergy in universities, and the spaces of education designated for women.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got I Get Taken to School. I get taken to school today by Dr. Eleanor Janneger, who's one of the best in the business. She's a medieval historian. She specializes in the kind of social history. And she gets triggered on the internet when someone uses the term medieval inaccurately.

When they use the term medieval to describe something effectively that's primitive, dirty, and stupid. She gets medieval. I mean, I can't even say that, but she does get medieval on them. And she got medieval on me. She taught me quite a few lessons about medieval education in this podcast. It's a lot more sophisticated than idiots like me think. So she's a hugely engaging, wonderful academic, teaching at various universities around London, teaching at various London universities.ondon teaching at various london universities she's a rising star we welcome her to the history hit network not just on audio but on tv she's made a documentary about medieval london it's overlapping jurisdictions it's wild if you wish to watch this

documentary it's coming up soon please get a history hit tv uh it's a new digital history channel really and it's accessible for podcast at a special introductory rate. If you use the code POD1 at checkout, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free, and then you get a second month for just one pound a euro or dollar. And we've got one of our biggest weeks ever next week. We've got Elna Yanager coming in the next few weeks, but next week we've got Mayflower 400. We've got an exclusive

documentary going up on the channel. We've also got Battle of Britain 80. We've got a whole season of programmes coming out. We've got Australian historian Matt McLaughlin. we've got a whole season of programs coming out we got australian historian matt mcclaughlin we got a new program with me and stephen bungay uh we got victoria taylor the british aviation historian she's got a a new podcast out so it's basically all happening next week's one of our busiest weeks ever and he's back to school here at history hit just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who stuck with us and uh who believes in us because it's um we're really delivering now on our promise to make this the world's best history channel.

So thank you very much. In the meantime, everyone here is Dr. Eleanor Janneger. Enjoy. Hello, and thank you for coming on the podcast. Oh, thanks so much for having me once again. It's such a pleasure. You've been doing so much for us recently. You've been making shows for History Hit TV. You know, once we find top talent, we never let them go. You're on the team. Let's start. First of all, give me my customary telling off. What do you say to me and others who use the word medieval? others who use the word medieval we shouldn't but we do as shorthand for something as stupid barbaric uh primitive religiously extreme dirty come on give me your give me your party your

three-minute rebuttal okay so my three-minute rebuttal to that is in general there it's difficult to use the word medieval in those ways because usually when people are using the word medieval to mean those things they're actually not even talking about the medieval period, right? They're usually talking actually about the early modern period, and they just don't know the difference, right? So, you know, it's one of these things where there's an invisible line and like no one, okay, at the end of the medieval period woke up and said, oh, we're early modern now. That's it, everybody. It's the new era. You know, that's not how things were. But, you know, with the hindsight that we have as historians and as people living in the modern world, we can kind

of look back and say, well, you know, it's a blurry border. We don't know exactly where it is. But I can tell you pretty definitively by the time we're talking about the 16th century, we're talking about the early modern period. And that's what people actually mean a lot of the time when they're like, oh, well, this is really violent. You know, a lot of the time they're actually talking about the early modern period. If they're talking about things like torture or if they're talking about really difficult penal things, a lot of the time they'll be talking about the early modern period in which we see a great proliferation in ways to torture people and enthusiasm for torturing people. In fact, or, you know, someone says, oh, wow, really violent, lots of wars. Oh, this is so medieval.

You know, have a look at the wars that we had in the 20th century. I'll tell you what, they've got a much higher kill rate than wars did in the medieval period. This isn't to say that there weren't wars, of course, but, you know, we're actually a lot more violent on the scale of things now than anyone was in the medieval period, really. And, you know, because it takes a lot more to get in a ditch with someone and stab them with a sword,

you know, that takes a very particular kind of, uh, of, uh, gumption. Whereas now we kind of press buttons and kill people. And so we're a lot easier about doing it. Or if we're talking about things like, oh, they're dirty or they're filthy. Um, we actually find that in the medieval period, uh, people bathed more than they did in the modern actually find that in the medieval period, people bathed more than they did in the modern period. And in fact, medieval people were really into bathing. For them, it would be fun to just kind of like go to the bathhouse. They saw it as going to the spa. You know, you do that once a week. You'd sort of scrub up at home as best you could, but you'd go out once a week for a nice big soak. And then you see that actually it's in the early modern period that

that goes out of fashion. And there comes into this whole idea of uh actually it's better to be dirty it's better not to well not to be dirty necessarily but um they don't think about cleanliness in the same way they don't say oh you take a bath in order to be clean they say you change your clothes to be clean this is a big early modern thing um and we just tend to say oh well if that's what happened in the early modern period then whatever was happening in the medieval period must have been more so and worse. And we just kind of assume. And it has to do with the fact that, you know, a lot of us aren't taught medieval history because it's complicated and it's weird. And what medieval history is really varies place to place. So it's difficult for us to teach it. So we don't learn about it.

We have these particular myths handed down and it just doesn't have any bearing in truth. And so, you know, that's kind of like part A of the rant. Part B is that also the problem with this is, and why it's annoying, I mean, obviously it's annoying to me because I love to be pedantic and just say, well, actually, to people. But the other reason why it's a difficult thing to do and why I say that we shouldn't use medieval in that way is that it kind of lets us off the hook for the things that we do. You know, if we look at some kind of violent act and we say, oh, that's really medieval, it lets us off the hook for the fact that it actually represents our own time period really, really well. You know, we're still kind of a

violent society for all intents and purposes. It's just that a lot of times violence is happening somewhere that we can't see it. You know, and that prevents us from dealing with it and actually making changes to improve our society or to say, okay, well, actually, what does this say about us? As opposed to saying, well, this has something to do with some people who died 800 years ago, you know. So I think that it's not a useful term or a useful way of saying that things are, you know. I will go ahead and call something medieval when it actually is medieval, which, you know, happens. You know, something like an investiture ceremony of a king. I'll be like, ooh, that's medieval. You know, something, you know, religious debates about transubstantiation. I'll get very excited about

that and call that medieval. But, you know, we need to use our terms correctly so that we can kind of have a better society and be more connected to our actual world. And there you go. That's the rant. That's the one. Excuse me, Dr. Yannick. I cannot believe you are earthing some of that medieval poison into the early modern period. What do you think you're doing? Although as I'm saying that, of course, I'm thinking to myself, the Titanic violence, you've got 30 years war, of course, the start of the largest project of territorial acquisition in history by European empires, the enslavement of forced transportation of millions. So maybe I should back down on this. But today, it was a great idea you had, which we should talk education, people are all going back

to school, we hope. What is education in the medieval world, if it's even possible to circumscribe at that time and geographical period? And who gets it? Yeah, so this is a really interesting one, because one of the things that you kind of can make a big, I mean, it's a draw abroad and sweeping generalization about a thousand years of time, right? And that's that education as the way that we think of it doesn't really exist. And it's much more concentrated

in particular area of society, right? So, you know, your average peasant is not really going to receive an education. They don't really need one in the way that we do now. You know, reading and writing is not something that is going to come up so much. The things that they need to make sure that they can do is plant and harvest and keep animals alive. And so that is an education in and of itself, you know, and something that one learns. But we don't really tend to think about that as education. But, you know, just shout out to peasants. We always like to acknowledge the 80% of the population that are the peasantry and the fact that they are not really necessarily going to

be involved in this. And why I find medieval education really interesting is that it kind of varies across the period. So when you kind of have in the very early medieval period, so right after the collapse of Rome, you have a lot more emphasis on kind of like individual learning for rich people who will get tutors in. You know, so this can be at a court. So if you're a king, you're going to employ some of the smartest and best to educate your children. And interestingly, then in particular, it is seen that all children who are at a really high level at court, they all need a very good education. So it doesn't matter if it's your daughter.

She's absolutely expected to read and write and have things to say. It's not as gendered as you would think that it is. And that is kind of like a hangover from Roman practices and how things were done then. As time shifts on, you have the birth of the great medieval institution which is monasteries and monasteries kind of tend to change the game a bit because theoretically um at a monastery anyone can get educated and this is because for monasteries one of the big things that they aim to do is they kind of aim to take men out of the world so they can concentrate on God and they praise God through ora et labore or prayer and work. And one of the forms of work that they do is keeping texts alive. So they'll usually have large scriptoria, they'll have large

libraries where they're all day long copying, copying, copying out texts. And that can be anything from the Bible, you know, that's a big one. Or it can be something like Aristotle or Plato or any of the classics like, you know, the's a big one. Or it can be something like Aristotle or Plato or any of the classics like, you know, the Inid, that's something that they would be writing texts of all day. So one of the things that they have to do in order to have a kind of a scriptory on that level is they have to have enough educated people to keep it running. So they're constantly educating people. They're constantly taking in boys who will become monks who are also going to work within this system. So some of the monks are more specifically teachers, and they'll have really, really great schools going on where they are just reading ancient texts. They're

learning how to write them. There are big philosophical debates. And this is true sort of across Europe. But the big, big monastery that is really celebrated is Cluny in the French lands. And that is like really, really incredible. But at the same time, we do see, for example, some monks, especially around in England, are considered so good and so educated that they end up at the court of Charlemagne and this sort of thing. So Alcuin of York really famously, you know, ends up kind of down on the continent. You see there's this great kind of sharing of resources and sharing of monks. And, you know, people know enough about scholarship and are interested enough in education that if they've got a really nice court going, they're like, I'm going to have that monk, send that monk down to me. So people will travel great distances

to get some monks. But the thing to keep in mind about monasteries is, again, this isn't really for everyone. Like in theory, in theory, a peasant family could say, okay, well, we're going to go pledge our son as an oblate. It's what it's called when you send your son off to a monastery young. But in practice, that doesn't really happen because in the first place, you need to be able to like spare your son. So say you're running a farm, it's probably nice to have another set of hands around like to help out with the cows cows and help with the plowing and everything. In the second, if you send your kid as an oblate, they also have to come usually, it's like the unwritten rule is they come with some money. So you send some money along and say, okay, well, this is going to help for their upkeep now that they're going to be in here for the rest of their lives.

The monastery incidentally becomes like a really big place where people stash like their third sons or fourth sons if they're rich right so you know you kind of have one who's going to take over the the family name you have one who is going to go off and fight in wars and you're like oh and we'll have one that'll pray for us so they'll get themselves a monk right so for a long long time this kind of holds but then um under again charlemagne and the carolingian renaissance which happens in the 9th century, it's one of the several renaissances that we have in the medieval period. Charlemagne makes a big move and he says, well, you know, people should be able to get educated and they should have access to all this great knowledge without having to join

an actual monastery and say that they're retiring from life. So what he does is he sets up cathedral schools. And so, you know, it kind of does what it says on the tin, right? So at any cathedral, in theory, you can send kids there and they can be educated. It's usually boys, but we do have some examples where girls can get educated at the cathedral schools as well. So, you know, here in London, you would pop along to St. Paul's and you could get your education. And that is free. But again, it's just, can your parents spare you? And this does a lot actually for literacy in the medieval world generally.

So in any city, like any kid in theory can be getting a good education. You can also get packed off to a city if your family's got the money and there's somewhere for you to stay. And so you're going to learn to read and write there. And this is one of these things where, like a side note, when I'm talking about literacy here, I'm talking specifically about Latin. So there isn't really a big push to read and write in the vernacular. It certainly happens. A lot of the fun literature in the medieval period exists in the vernacular. So like courtly love literature or romance literature a lot of the time is written in the vernacular. So like courtly love literature or romance literature a lot of the time is written in French, for example. But no one is going to be using French

as, for example, like a written business language. Like if you are going to ship a bunch of fleece from France to Germany, you're probably going to write things out in Latin because that's the understood, you know, language. So it's not a lingua franca yet. It's, you know, the lingua Latina. So everything is done in Latin. franca yet. It's, you know, the lingua latina. So everything is done in Latin. Then at the cathedral schools, there's a new way of dividing up the way that they talk about education. And that is they come up with the concept of the liberal arts. And the liberal arts are really interesting because, so there's seven of them all together, but they put them into two different categories. So the first category is the trivium,

which is grammar, logic, and rhetoric. So basically grammar, learning to read and write Latin, logic, learning how to kind of puzzle things through. So there's a lot of Plato, there's a lot of Aristotle, and then rhetoric, which is learning to argue about it. And they really, really love arguing. And there's a huge, a huge price is kind of put on being able to make philosophical arguments. And they do literally argue. It's one of these things where people from various cathedral schools will literally go from place to place and they'll interrupt each other's lectures

and they'll have screaming matches about Aristotle and it gets really, really wild. But so say you then figure out the trivium, you've got that covered, you move on to what's called the quadrivium. And that is music, astrology, geometry, and arithmetic. So that's when you get into the kind of like sciences and maths. So all of those things, you know, are really moving forward in the medieval period, which is one of those things where you wouldn't necessarily think about. They love in particular astronomy astronomy because it's seen as absolutely necessary to know what's going on with the stars to understand what's going on with Earth. So we'll see like really complicated and complex tables that are used, for example, to track the

way Mercury moves through the sky or Mars moves. So they understand concepts like retrograde and they know how to calculate for that. And it's absolutely crazy stuff without calculators, you know, because they're really brilliant people. But then things kind of move out of the cathedral schools and the cathedral schools always keep going, but that tends to be more of a thing for specifically city kids if they want to get an education. And then you have the rise of the universities. So the first university is in Salerno in the Italian lands

and they do more specifically medicine. So if you want a degree as a physician, you really want to learn all of the ins and outs of something, you go down to Salerno. They're doing actual dissections and that sort of thing of bodies. They have a kind of idea of what's going on inside of the human body, inside the eye, inside of anything. They got all kinds of surgeries happening. And they are consulting texts that come in from the Middle East. And they're learning a lot about medicine, which is cool. In Paris, that's kind of like the next really big thing,

because they more specifically are all about a theological or philosophical education. So if you say that you want to be like high up in the church, say you're gunning for, you know, a bishopric, you want to be a bishop and live real fancy, or you want to make yourself useful at a court, you will say, okay, well, I'm going to go to the University of Paris, because that's where there is a big, big emphasis on theological studies and legal studies. So in Paris, that's when things get like really really cranked up because you have students coming in from all over Europe in order to go to the school and uh university students in the middle ages kind of act like university students now do um and they're rowdy and they're wild um and you

have actual riots that start in Paris because the students will do things like run out on their bar tab at an inn and then um you know there's an innkeeper who kind of like chases a group of students who've left their bar tab unpaid. And they beat him up really, really badly. And everyone is like, okay, look, come on, guys. You can't just go around beating people in the street because you didn't want to pay your bar tab. This is not a great way of doing things.

So the church has this really like complicated problem on their hands because they're educating all these kids. These kids are rowdy, they're wild, and they're drinking and they're getting in legal trouble. And they're like, okay, well, how do we get around this? And their answer to this is they're like, we're going to make all students members of the clergy. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed

not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. history hits. There are new episodes every week. Oh yeah, that, okay, that is clever. That's very clever.

Yeah, so they're not saying that it's going to curtail their behavior in any way. Their behavior is going to remain exactly the same, but the thing is, once they get in a drunken brawl, they can't be tried in regular courts anymore. So they won't be under the jurisdiction of the king in Paris. They'll be under the jurisdiction of the church. So you'll drag these naughty students in front of, you know, their own headmaster. They'll slap them on the wrist and go, guys, knock it off. Come on. You can't do that. And then that'll be that. And everything kind of goes on. And this is where the term that you may have heard a town and gown relations comes from. Because all medieval students are wearing clerical gowns, like robes. And so that's like the gowns as opposed to the town where a university takes place. So interestingly, like this, it kind

of does two things. It explains the real interest in, you know, theology that you have on the part of a bunch of rowdy drunks. But at the same time, it shows you how good people in the medieval period are at getting around legal dodges, right? So here's, they put some of their finest legal minds on it. And they're like, all right, it's going to be easier to stop a bunch of 18 year olds from getting tried than it is to stop them from drinking. So we're just going to have to go with that one. And it works. So in Paris, it becomes enough of a thing that at a point in time when town-gown relations are really bad, all the students go on strike and they say, OK, well, that's it.

Well, we're not having university anymore. And it almost brings Paris to its knees. Like Paris is really dependent on having all this money come in from students. Students bringing Paris to its knees. That is that's never going to happen again. That's a one off. Exactly. So, you know, it's it's probably it's cute because it's some of the very first, you know,

Parisian student riots and it's all about beer and their their access to it. So then you see the same thing. Kind of everyone sees what it's doing for paris and they start making their own universities so here in england you get oxford and then cambridge obviously um in italy there's the bologna law school which actually now that i'm recalling it starts a bit before paris it's just not it's just more specifically legal um and all over italy you'll have various universities springing up and then it becomes like this sort of thing where if you want to prove that you've got a really nice city you have to get a university so um for example

when the emperor charles the fourth is doing up prague to make it a center of you know religion they're like uh-oh we better get a university in here and that's when the charles university is founded um in 1348 so uh but to found a university you have to have sign off from the actual pope because it's a church uh thing because all these, you know, drunk or not, they are clergy members and they might go on to be clergy members. You know, after they've learned all this stuff, they might go on to work in the church. They might work as educators. They might do all kinds of things. But it basically, if you want to work at a court and you're coming from kind of like lower positions, that's how you do it. But so having said all that, that's all kind of like for the dudes, right? Because if you're going to be a member of the clergy, if you have to take holy orders in order to go to university, you have to be a man. So what do women do?

And the answer is they're usually kind of educated at home. And in fact, if they are from the richer family, so yeah, sure, you might have attended a cathedral school. But richer families often employ teachers and that sort of a thing for their own kids. So say in London, you might bring a teacher in if you are kind of from several wealthy families, say that you work for your guild member, that sort of thing, you've got money, you might employ a teacher to teach your daughters and your sons at home and that sort of a thing. And we know actually a lot of the time those private teachers are women. So women are getting educated and women are frequently educators. So it's sort of the same as now where a great majority of people who are doing elementary

education are women. And even before then, in the home, in literate households, women will be teaching children sort of their ABCs or kind of very, the very simplest sort of phonetic reading and that kind of thing. So, Eleanor, I was going to ask, I mean, are there any non-religious routes to education? But yeah, you just answered that. But it's predominantly women and in the domestic sphere? Yeah, so the minute that you kind of take it outside of the bounds of the church, it tends to be female, which is really, really interesting. Higher up, you know, if we're talking about a royal courts and royal education, it might be that you get your own monk in or something to do it and teach people in the home. But a lot of the times when it's private, you know,

and it is women and it's interesting because that's something that we have in common, you know, with the modern period. If you think to, you know, all the great kind of like 18th century romances or 19th century romances you know the governess is always a woman um so you bring a woman in to kind of uh look after these kids and um it's interesting because we have these great um we have a lot of knowledge that we get about this comes from really cool sources like books of hours and books of hours are essentially really fancy prayer books that women, especially rich women, kind of wear on

their belts. And it tells you what prayers to pray at various times of the day. But it's also just a really pretty thing so that you can show off that you've got a lot of money. But within them, they'll have like ABCs and they will have like really simple reading tasks for people. So we know that women at home and especially rich women are doing their own educating of kids. So there is also a kind of structural, a non-structural learning that happens within the home. But if you want something with a certificate, if you want someone to stamp it off, it goes through the church. So, yeah, it's kind of like there's these two spheres where that happens the reputation of the church is that it did circumscribe intellectual and scientific endeavor is this true was the church a gatekeeper the church is actually

the biggest supporter of especially scientific learning in the medieval period. Like they're the ones doing it. They're the ones who are like, oh my God, yes, please go to university. Hey, look at the stars. What do you think that is? You know, they're the ones that are actually really pushing for a lot of scientific advancements. Now there are some, you know, issues that you will have where there is a lot of back and forth about whether or not, for example, dissections can take place. They do take place in the medieval period because there isn't actually a church prescription on it happening entirely. It actually tends to be more legal and on the part of kings. So here in England,

for example, they have one of the longest standing bans on doing dissections, which goes into the late 14th, early 15th century. But in Italy, there will sometimes be rules that every few years you have to perform a dissection and you have to make sure that all the physicians know what's going on inside of people's bodies. So that's kind of a myth about the medieval period. And it's actually an interesting one because people say, oh, well, medieval people are really stupid and the church was stopping them dissecting people. But actually, in the Roman period,

you were not allowed to dissect people because of, you know, pagan beliefs. So it's actually one of those things where that existed further back and we don't accuse them of, you know, stymieing the scientific process. There are times, on the other hand, when they absolutely will shut your thought down, but it tends to be more theological for example albigen scene crusade against um what the church called the cathars what we're starting to call like the good men of languedoc when they believe something other than what the church believes oh yes they will come in and try to stop you but it tends to be religious and it's not actually scientific um the scientific thing basically um kind of kicks off with the idea

that the church suppresses science is once again early early modern not medieval and it basically kind of kicks off with the idea that the church suppresses science is once again, early, early modern, not medieval. And it's kind of, it's tied up most specifically with the Galileo trial. And that's a whole other kettle of fish. So medieval church, not so much early modern church. I will give it to you. I will. Okay. I want to come back to the big sort of strategic point about education and science and progress. But before I do, can I ask why they believe in educating people? Was it about making better Christians or was there just a kind of Aristotelian idea of living a good life, the joy of learning, self-development for its own sake? So, I mean, the answer is kind of yes on both those counts.

So, I mean, for most medieval people, medieval Christians in particular, you know, the goal is that you're always attempting to be sort of the best Christian that you can be. And because a lot of formal education is about, is, you know, made specifically by the church, there is a big emphasis on that and kind of understanding the divine nature of Christ, understanding the divine nature of the world, you know, when especially they're kind of doing things like, you know, what we would call science, you know, one of the things that they're trying to sort of discover is the what they see is the divine, the divine presence within nature, that sort of thing. And they're very, they're very explicit about that. Things like geometry, in particular,

can be seen as being particularly sacred, like a way of understanding how God orders the universe and how shapes work, that sort of thing. It's seen very expressly as divine. But on the other hand, there's a lot in there that is also about the very pleasure of learning. So it's construed as, you know, being a good thing. People really enjoy reading, you know, even if it is, you know, whether that be in the vernacular, if you're, you know, want to read the Roman de la Rose in French, or if you want to read, you know, Dante or something like that, that gets translated into Latin so that it can circulate more frequently. You know, people read for pleasure. People really enjoy that. People like being smart, you know,

for them, you know, even people like Abelard, who are, you know, big jerks and going around having giant arguments, for them, there is a real sport and pleasure in the kind of constant debates. And they think it also is kind of connecting them to the past. So when they are debating theology or philosophy or something like that, they say, oh, well, this links me to Plato, this links me to Socrates and Aristotle, we're a part of this like grand historical narrative that is seeking to explain and understand the world as a whole. And they very much see themselves as a part of that. But it's also understood that if you're really living the good life, you are educated to live the good life is to have books. You know, women's books of hours are this really potent symbol of, you know, expendable wealth, certainly. But it's

interesting and instructive that it focuses on books. So, you know, if you're living a really, really nice life, you're able to have like your own book of prayers and you're able to enjoy reading and enjoy the meditative practice that that allows. So there is a way of kind of seeing this as something that certainly augments your life and makes it better. But then there is also just careerism as there is now. You know, I will say as someone who teaches at university that the reason that you go to university is so that you can learn about the things that you're interested in and enrich your mind and become just a better educated person, which benefits society. But most people will tell you that the reason that you go to university is to get a job.

So it's exactly the same thing for medieval people. Obviously, they see that there's a benefit to education that is in and of itself. But at the same time, well time well hey if you want to get ahead at court get an education um if you want to get ahead within the church get an education um you want to be able to make better business deals get an education so there is always that ticking away under the surface as well as always we get wonderful stories like you on the podcast talking about the sort of motivate the motivations and what drives people in different periods of course actually you know sounds not so different to today so i'm nervous about saying this but do you come on do you ever have dark moments when you think that maybe there is some truth to the traditional or

you're going to tell me it's an early modern take that nothing really happens between kind of ptolemy and his at, his geography in the second century AD, and then the sort of Copernican Galileo explosion of science. I suppose that the closest I get to dark moments with this is I do, you know, as someone who's had the benefit of growing up post the idea of the scientific method and all of that, which I love the scientific method, huge fan. That's a great thing. You know, I will sometimes get frustrated, you know, when you look at people just simply take something as true. You know, it can be kind of frustrating when you'll see someone say, oh, well, Aristotle said this, so therefore that's

true. So, you know, basing this off of that, we move on, you know. It's kind of like, for example, if someone didn't show their footnotes in a historical text now, I'd be like, where'd you get that from? You know, and I do get frustrated by that. Sometimes, though, it's also kind of delightful. You know, it can be delightful when you see a bestiary, which is like a compendium of all the different animals in the world. And, you know, you see them say, oh, okay, well, this is the properties of a basilisk, an animal that definitely exists because some guy saw one once. And, you know, he can turn you to stone with his gaze. And, you know, I'll see things like that. And I'm like, you know what? This is delightful. I'm glad no one's looked into this. I don't want

to look into this. I don't want to know any more about it. But at the same time, it's not true, certainly, that there is no advancement in terms of, you know, quote unquote, scientific process over the time. You know, we get way better at surgery. We get much better at mathematics. We learn more about, you know, for example, sub-Saharan Africa. We learn more about china that sort of a thing and so we definitely are always learning it's just that it's not happening at the same rate as it happens now and that's a shame but i also feel like we can't really blame people for like not knowing that germs exist you know it's uh there's so much complicated things that happened in that period that allow us for all of the interesting things that we know now. And it's very much, as Newton was quoting medieval people on,

we're very much standing on the shoulders of giants. So I can see further than they can. But am I smarter than Thomas Aquinas? I am not. I am certainly not. There are a lot of very clever people in the medieval period who have made my learning possible. And so I try to be kind about that. Yeah, of course. Like, as you're saying this,

I'm thinking, of course, things move and fits and starts. I mean, you know, not that much happens. Not that much happens in 500 years of Roman hegemony, for example. Yeah, I mean, and it's really interesting, you know, because like, I will see people, for example, let, you know, the Romans completely slide on doing exactly the same thing that medieval people do. And I'm like, why is it okay when the Romans do it and not okay when medieval people do it? And, you know, to be honest, I think it's that people just think the Romans are doing scientific method. They're not, but people just kind of believe that. It just sort of feels true. I'm always surprised by how little technological scientific advance there was under the Pax Romana.

Yeah, they were lounging, which I kind of respect in a way, you know. Like, I too would like to take a really nice bath and like go to a feast. So I can understand that impetus. Thank you as ever for bringing your genius and wit to the podcast. You'll be back on History with your own show, which only someone of your brilliance could have managed to force us to do basically a pub crawl around medieval London. So thank you very much. Thank you, Dan. Hi, everyone. It's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying, and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself.

Please, please go onto iTunes, wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps, and basically boosts up the chart, which is good, and then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't want to subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't want to buy my calendar, but this is free.

Come on, do me a favour. Thanks.