#i didn't cover every songle aspect of the debate because its much more complicated but that's the gist of it all

[hideouspumpkin]

Hi Lena 💐 Why do you think medieval is the most hated time period?

Anon im glad you asked because I love defending the medieval time period!!! There's a very simple answer to this : basically the people of the renaissance wanted to make themselves look better so they presented the middle ages like the "dark" ages and they said they brought refinement and light and intelligence etc etc so they propagated an image of medieval people as uncivilised uncleaned brutes. They also were saying that classical time period was an ideal society, with its way of thinking, its societal organisation, its intellectuals, and the middle ages just destroyed that. The new way of living brought after the antiquity was seen and showed as barbarian and uncultured, having destroyed something beautiful (just a quick word to say, the middle ages were not a dark period, it was just a different way of thinking the world and its organisation) The idea was basically that that the middle ages were really a shameful interlude between the great antiquity and its return through the renaissance (middle ages -> times in the middle ) this idea prevailed and stayed strong. We lost a lot of primary sources because of this, renaissance people not considering things coming from the middle ages as worth anything and thus destroying them. It was an idea of the middle ages that was reinforced by the enlightenment movement and afterwards. Everyone, intellectuals especially, were presenting the middle ages in a less than glorious light. In the 19th century intellectuals became more and more interested with the middle ages, the middle ages were fashionable, and so a lot of historians worked on the time period, and analysed its events (check out what medievalism is if you want to know more about the middle ages as a trendy time period) But it was still a very biased and unquestioned image of the middle ages that was circulating, the one inherited from the renaissance. This vision of the middle ages as a dark ugly time has influenced the way People see and represent the middle ages, in books, even history books, but nowadays in movies or tv shows, or even just in the way we speak, comparing troubled or violent events with the middle ages. Some historian are trying (im one of them) to change this but the general population has such a strong idea of what they expect the middle ages to be, they tend to doubt what we're saying lmao

As for today, I think we inherited the Renaissance's way of thinking, so we see the middle ages as something dark and ugly and dirty. And I think its also because we've been raised to think that some things, some ways of being, are superior than others. We attribute values to habits. And our society thinks the classical ways of thinking and acting is the best and brightest. We value control, on ourselves, our emotions and actions, and on our society at large, we value traditional education (reading, writing etc etc) instead of a more practical education, and the middle ages go against that idea, or what we think of the middle ages does, it goes against our view of what's smart and good and thus they were bad bad bad. Even though our view is biased, and the middle ages were is time of people not knowing of to read, or think, because they did (do you really think the renaissance would have been possible if the middle ages hadn't prepared the field before hand ? That nothing happened for 1000 years, people just woke up like that smart again ? Nah) Both the general public and academics have thus a very biased way of seeing the middle ages, and if more and more historians are trying to fight this vision, it stays very strong because the medias keep showing thoses times as such (think of game of thrones for example)

I could say much much more on the topic, but those are the basics ! (I didn't go into details to debunk this point of view, which I could, but I'd dint want to write a whole essay lmao) if you're interested check out this podcast episode: were the dark ages a myth. This article: why the middle ages are called the dark ages and this one (it's in French tho) : De l'usage des dark ages dans l'histoire médiévale

Hope what I said was clear and understandable, don't hesitate if you have more questions I looove talking about the middle ages agshdhs