Middle Ages

MIDDLE AGES! Medieval People "I do." she says, but inside she is thinking "I don't." That's how young women thought in the Middle Ages. "I fear thee hath performed a mishap by not paying thy taxes and will have to be hung." That’s what a king might say to a poor peasant. "Thou will have to do a bit of bloodletting." That's what a doctor would say to a patient. The king, the lady, and the doctor were three of the most important people in the Middle Ages.

The King The king was the most important person in the Middle Ages. In fact, he was the highest person according to the feudal system. The feudal system was a system where the peasants gave taxes to their lords and the lords gave taxes to their kings.

Even though the king was a very important man he had to have a way to maintain his position. He did. A smart king would give gifts to his noblemen. A king also had to have a way to have a way to control his nobility. He had that to. He would lead his army into battles and waging sucessful wars.

A kings vassals (lords) served loyalty, advice, and armed support to their kings. In return, the king gave them wealth and mini-kingdoms called fiefdoms.A vassal also had vassals of their own.

Usually when a king says something, people listen. But he still needs a staff of officials to make sure his orders were carried out. William I of England ruled that way.He was even called William the Conqueror because he made sure that people followed his orders and got things done.

A kings position was not always secure. Over the years, some barons grew wealthy enough to rival the king, forcing him to grant favors. King John of England found himself in that position. To stay king, he had to make a speech of promises. Part of his speech was "no freeman shall be arrested except by the law of the land. We shall refuse justice to no one."

The Lady The lady was not considered a very important person during the Middle Ages. According to St. Jerome, a Latin father of the Christian church, woman is the gate of the devil, the path of wickedness, the sting of the serpent, in a word, a perilous object. A woman didn't get to decide much on their own. Tor example even if a man and woman didn't like each other they would be forced to marry so the families would fatten their pockets with money. And a girl under the age of ten could be married to a man of fifty or sixty! The church did not allow divorce so the wife would have to stay with her husband until he died. When he died, his widow still would be very young so her family would probably force her to marry again. That could happen about four times in her life.

An unmarried daughter was a burden to her family. They were often sent to become nuns. By sending her away, families thought they had solved their problem. Usually woman were sent away because they had fallen in love with a man her family disapproved. And so they probably felt miserable. Some woman probably felt happy because they wanted to be nuns. Here is the voice of a French woman named Heloise, who became a nun after falling in love with a man her family disliked: "It was not because felt God calling me that I came to accept the severe way of life of the cloister as a young girl. It was because of your desire alone." When Geoffrey Chaucers, a 14th century poet, wrote a poem about a nun at the head at priory, he wrote that the things she cared about most were table manners, clothes, jewlery, and her pet dogs. Although not all nuns thought that way, they might have thought similar to Chaucers nun.

The lady was treated like that because according to a Greek legend the first woman, Pandora, was the one who opened the forbidden box and caused war and illness to mankind.

The Doctor Although not one of the highest people on the feudal system, the doctor was probably one of the top ten most important people in the Middle Ages, even though some people don't realize it. During the twelfth century, because of the Black Death, the doctor was probably one of the top five most important people. But, unfortunately they thought the Black Death was caused by a strange gas in the air so nearly a third of the population wiped out. Reading the above, people might think that medieval doctors weren't that smart. They were smart, but their cures were based on the way they looked at diseases and how they used superstitious beliefs. For example, a surgeon once wrote "the way to close the edges of a wound you must make ants bite on them, and then cut of their heads." The doctors would only use a certain kind of ant as a primitive form of stitches When the ant would bite, it would be almost impossible for the grip to be loosened. Doctors would use these as stitches to hold the skin together. The skin would eventually grow back to how it was, and the heads of the ants would disintegrate or be taken out.

Another reason they had such far-fetched ideas was although in Greece, science had reached it's sophisticated level, in the rest of Europe people couldn't understand it until the Arabs translated the scientific texts into Latin.

Even though medieval medicine was partly made out of plants they also had unusual ingredients to. Some examples are dung beetles, bat droppings, and powdered earthworms. The medicines could be drunken or made into ointments.

There was also no such thing as injections, no completely safe ways to put a patient to sleep, and the connection between bad hygiene and disease had not yet been made.

The Middle Ages was a very interesting part of history and there is much more to learn about besides the people. You should remember the king because he was the head of the feudal system, the lady because she was treated so badly, and the doctor

THOOSE ARE 3 PEOPLE THAT ARE IMPORTANT!