Medicine stands still, 1000-1500

The Middle Ages

Before we start, do not EVER fall into the complacency of thinking that the people of the Middle Ages were stupid.  They were not.  They were much more practical than most people today; dropped into a wilderness, they would survive, you would be dead within a week.  They were at least as clever as us – they were INVENTING the ideas and things we now take for granted.

Neither, by the way – despite the arrogance of the AQA specification – did medieval medicine ‘stand still’. 

They simply thought DIFFERENTLY to us … because, just like us, they had codified a set of beliefs and behaviours which helped them navigate their world.  Your job as an historian is not to look down on them as ‘backward’, but to empathise, respectfully, with what made them ‘tick’. 

Determining Factors of Medieval Life...

Economy

The people of the Middle Ages did not have a concept of ‘the Economy’ in the sense that we understand it.  The first use of the word comes only towards the end of the Middle Ages (1440), when it meant ‘managing the household’, not the country. 

Throughout the Middle Ages, England was overwhelmingly a place of small rural villages, and – beyond a travelling tinker and the occasional local fair – most villagers simply made what they needed (‘subsistence’ farming) as serfs under the ‘feudal system’. 

However, there was a century of rapid economic growth 1200-1300, when towns began to develop, led by the guilds of merchants and craftsmen.  The period 1400-1500 saw another period of growing prosperity as England abandoned the feudal system and serfdom, and started farming sheep and making cloth. 

But the economy remained small by international standards, and was not able to cope with the famines and plagues of the 14th century. 

Government

The ‘Dark Ages’ in Britain (400-900) had been a period of anarchy, and saw a retreat into the feudal system of local lords ruling over their manors.  From 1215, however, England had a relatively stable monarchy and a system of law courts at national, county and manor levels.  The system was established enough to survive both the Peasants’ Revolt and the Wars of the Roses. 

There were, of course, ‘outlaw’ bands, and the nobility manipulated the local courts to their own advantage, but medieval England generally accepted the principle of the rule of law. 

War

Medieval English society was suffused by violence.  It is hard to find a year, never mind a decade, when England was not involved in some war or other – the Conquest, the Crusades, the Hundred Years War, border wars with Scotland and Wales, the invasion of Ireland, rebellions and revolts, the Wars of the Roses etc, …

Nor were these minor skirmishes.  According to Historic England, 28,000 men died at the battle of Towton (1461). 

Communications

Although medieval people travelled and traded all over the known world (e.g.  on Crusade, or on a pilgrimage, or for trade) – and there was an international system of banks to help them – communication was limited to the speed of a horse or the hazards of a ship.  Books and letters had to be laboriously copied by hand.  As a result, ideas and inventions spread slowly … or not at all.

Science and Technology

The people of the Middle Ages did not have a concept of ‘Science’ in the sense that we understand it.  For them the word, which was not used at all until c.1400, simply meant ‘organising existing knowledge’ rather than coming up with new ideas – a prime example was the Canon ('Collection') a medical encyclopaedia collated by a Muslim scholar called Avicenna (which, Wikipedia tells us, “is considered to be one of the most important publications in medicine”).  Medieval scholars studied what we would call 'theology' or 'philosophy', basing their work on the ideas of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who had tried to organise existing knowledge into a coherent whole. 

The word ‘technology’ did not appear until the 17th century, though that did not mean that medieval people did not understand such things – medieval inventions included: the crane, the blast furnace, mechanical clocks, spectacles, the compass, chess, quarantine, gunpowder and windmills … oh, and hospitals, and Universities (Oxford University was founded in 1096, Cambridge in 1209)!

Attitudes

1.  Faith

You will not understand the Middle Ages until you appreciate that medieval people perceived everything through the prism of faith and, in medieval Britain, that meant Christianity.  This had some good results – wealthy nobles, for example, gave huge charitable donations to try to buy their way into heaven, and wealthy women became nuns and devote their life to caring for the sick.   Churches and monasteries, especially, were regarded as places of safety, and to violate the sanctity of a church was a big deal (cf Thomas a Becket).  But it meant that anything without a visible cause tended to be attributed to ‘God’ … with some horrific consequences when those things were bad things. 

At the same time, the Middle Ages had its own 'world war' between the super-religions (Christianity and Islam), which seriously hindered the sharing of learning.

2.  The Patriarchy

There were some outstanding women in medieval times, at every level of society – from queens and castellans to local blacksmiths – but medieval society was massively patriarchal.  Generally, women were excluded from education, and only came to the fore if their husband died or was away. 

3.  Authority

Medieval people tended to trust authority – particularly the teachings of the Church, and of the Ancients (such as Aristotle) – over the evidence even of their own eyes. 

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