From Cheery Camelot to the Dark Ages: Why We Can't Make Up Our Minds about Medieval History

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lara Ayad (00:10):
Hello everyone, welcome to the Cheeky Scholar.
This is the podcast where smartand cheeky scholars share their
knowledge about history, artand culture and bust a whole lot
of myths along the way.
I'm your host, dr Lara Ayad.
If you're new to the show,thanks for joining us today, and

(00:31):
if you've listened before,welcome back.
For today's episode I sat downwith Paul B Sturdvant, a public
medievalist.
Paul knows a thing or two aboutthe Middle Ages in Europe and
he's written books about theMiddle Ages in today's popular
imagination,Some questions we tackle
together include what were theMiddle Ages really like?

(00:53):
How does pop culture portraythe medieval period?
When did cheery images of amagical Camelot transform into
the gritty, dark ages we see sooften in mainstream movies and
shows today?
And why have some right-wingextremist groups in Europe and
the United States fixated on theMiddle Ages in recent years?

(01:14):
What Paul reveals is thatmodern society has a dual image
of the Middle Ages, as either afairy tale-like land protected
by chivalrous knights, or as adark period filled with war,
brutality and suffering.
And this binary image we see sooften doesn't totally get it
right.
As Paul shows us in thisepisode, the Middle Ages we see

(01:38):
in Hollywood, video games andliterature might say more about
us and our modern predicamentsthan they do about the real
people and places of a long,multicultural and dynamic
historical period that we callmedieval.
So stay tuned.
I think you're going to likethis one.

(01:58):
Paul B.
Sturtevant is an historian, anauthor and a public medievalist.
He got his PhD from theInstitute for Medieval Studies
at the University of Leeds inthe UK.
Paul has written andco-authored a number of articles
, essays and books, his latestbooks being the Middle Ages and
Popular Imagination, memory,film and Medievalism and the

(02:22):
Devil's Historians how ModernExtremists Abuse the Medieval
Past.
In his free time, paul lovestaking dance classes and has a
competition-grade karaoke set.
He is currently Co-Founder andChief of Experiences at Stories
Abroad Tours.
Paul, welcome to the CheekyScholar.
How are you doing?

Paul Sturtevant (02:42):
I'm doing.
Great thanks.
How are you?

Lara Ayad (02:44):
I'm good.
Thank you.
I know you're all the way overin Lisbon, so I know it's the
evening for you.
How are things going in Lisbon?

Oh, things are lovely.
I mean, the weather is justkind of starting to turn, and so
it's gone from being in thelike 80s and 90s to being in the
60s and 70s, which isdefinitely my personal
preference.
So a big fan of the weatherover here at the moment and
everything's, yeah, everything'sgreat, that's awesome.

Lara Ayad (03:12):
I'm kind of jealous, even though I'm in Los Angeles,
like I'm actually jealousbecause Lisbon is such a
beautiful city.

No, you should be.
It's great.
Be jealous please.

Lara Ayad (03:21):
I love that.
I love that response.
Yeah, no well, and we're goingto get into what you're doing
there in Lisbon, Portugal, in aminute.
But you know, Paul, you're apublic medievalist.
What exactly is a publicmedievalist?

That's a great question and one that I get
anytime I introduce myself as apublic medievalist, I always
have to sort of immediatelyfollow it up with you know what?
What actually is that?
Okay?
So, so your listeners probablyknow what a medievalist is.
But just to give a round ideaof that word, first there's we

(03:58):
all know what historians are.
You know what say literaturescholars are art historians,
stuff like that, right?
You know what say literaturescholars are art historians,
stuff like that, right?
Um, but one of the quirky thingsabout, um academics who study
the middle ages is that, ingeneral, um, there tends to be
cross-disciplinary groupings ofpeople, um, based on this time

(04:20):
period I'll I'll rephrase that,so it makes sense um, so
effectively, the art historiansand the literature people and
the historians and thearchaeologists and et cetera, et
cetera, et cetera, of thepeople who study the Middle Ages
, broadly understood to bebetween 500 AD and 1500 AD.
We, generally speaking, like tohang out with one another, um,

(04:43):
and so collectively we callourselves medievalists, um, as a
way of indicating notnecessarily a particular
specialty in in one of thoseacademic strains, but a
specialty in this field.
Um, a public medievalist.
Um, a public medievalist is arelatively new phenomenon, based

(05:05):
on a discipline that reallystarted in the United States but
has begun to spread around theworld, and that is the
discipline of public history.
What on earth is public history?
Well, public history is historyfor the public, essentially,

(05:29):
essentially, um, it is the studyof the ways in which people
learn about history, um, theways in which it is used to form
our understanding of ourselvesand the world, uh, around us,
effectively our worldview.
Um, it is the study of the bestways to teach history, uh, in
the public sphere and in thepublic sphere generally, meaning
like outside the classroom kindof stuff.
So, museums, you know, popculture, stuff like that, you

(05:52):
know all of that is good gristfor the mill for the public
historian.
The traditional disciplines ofa public historian are things
like museums or archives orgalleries, things like that,
things like museums or archivesor galleries, things like that.
But I'm kind of a radicalpublic historian in that I like
to incorporate any situation inwhich people are learning about

(06:15):
the Middle Ages and using them,and so put all those things
together.
Um, I am sort of a generalstudier of the middle ages, um,
but specifically I am veryinterested in how that
intersects with the contemporarypublic today.
So public medievalist, thereyou go wow, that's.

Lara Ayad (06:34):
That's amazing, and I know you've also referred to
yourself as a weird medievalistin our prior conversations,
prior to recording, and I wouldlove to know more details about
what do you mean?
Because, okay, I'm going totell you right now and I have.
I have like a little bit of anexample of this.
I have a little journal notebookwith some medieval marginality
on it, which is basicallydrawings and animations that

(06:57):
scribes, monks, people who couldwrite and draw, made in the
margins of these manuscripts.
Um, so they're just, and thisis one of a cat licking its butt
yeah,
Oh, that's the famous catlicking its butthole! That's
lovely.
Yeah, the famous cat licking it's butthole! And
apparently there's many examplesof this, Paul
Oh, the dick tree is the best.
You need to look up the dicktree.

(07:18):
Oh yeah, it's like a nun?

Yeah! It has been.
It has been a great harvestthis year.
Let me harvest.
Let me harvest the penises formy dick tree, for uses we can
only possibly imagine.

Lara Ayad (07:31):
Yeah, better this year than last, yeah.
So what's the deal with this,Paul?
Because it seems like themiddle ages are kind of weird to
begin with.
So how could you be a weirdmedievalist?
Tell us about that.

I mean, let's be real, I think that all
medievalists are kind of weirdmedievalists.
We all I don't know amedievalist that doesn't like
low key or high key love thisstuff.
The Middle Ages you know whatis it?
There's a, there's an old quotethat the past is a foreign
country.
They do things differentlythere.
Right, the Middle Ages is along past and they do things

(08:08):
quite differently there in a lotof ways, and that's really a
lot of the fun of studying themiddle ages in in any concerted
way is understanding like twosimultaneously true,
contradictory truths, and thoseare that, on the one hand, their
culture was so different fromour own that it means that there

(08:31):
are a wide number of thingsthat we will encounter that just
don't make sense to us.
That just seems straight upweird.
That are, you know, to go withthe marginalia example, you've
got the non-harvesting dicks.

Lara Ayad (08:46):
You get, um, you get oh, and, by the way, sorry, I'll
just put a link to that in theshow notes, so that listeners
and viewers on youtube can seeexamples of this marginalia,
because it's amazing, they needto.
Yeah, yeah.

It's really good fun.
You've got knights joustingagainst snails, you've got foxes
beating up one another in largebattles.
You've got just any kind ofsilly thing that you could
imagine.
They've got it there.
It is effectively it's MontyPython the Quest for the Holy

(09:21):
Grail, but it's it's monty bythe request for the holy grail,
but it, but it's actually amedieval.
Um, and so there's these, andthis is best.
We can tell in a lot of cases,um, this is comedy for them um,
that there have been tried to bevery serious understandings of

(09:42):
some of the analyses of these.
Oh, this might be critical ofthis particular pope in this
particular and and my generalread of a lot of this is no,
this is, this is bored peopleamusing themselves.
Um, there is no greater forceon the planet than bored people
amusing themselves.
Um, and so and so, on the onehand, yeah, getting deep into

(10:05):
the Middle Ages is getting deepinto a foreign country, which is
getting deep into a worldviewthat you are going to have
difficulty understanding, andthat's what makes it exciting.
But and I said that this wasstarting with two contradictory
ideas, both of which are true.
So, on the one hand, foreigncountry, but, on the other hand,

(10:27):
people are people and thathistory and all of these not
sublet, all of these paralleldisciplines that I was talking
about, are all humanities, nomatter how the social scientists
amongst us might like to thinkof it, that they are all
humanities.
And I don't know what humannature is, but one of the

(10:55):
wonderful things about lookingat people in the past is that
you can see similarities intheir humanity, similarities in
their emotional lives,similarities in the ways in
which they move through theworld, in the ways in which they
care for each other and theirchildren and their communities,

(11:15):
the way that they try to buildsomething and are concerned
about what the world is going tobe like when they die.
And even though, and eventhough things are kind of
strange and terrible, lookingback at them in a way that would
be strange and terrible forthem, looking at us now that we

(11:35):
can look and we can see thatsort of little bit of ourselves,
and that..
What's a good example of that,Paul?
That really strikes you as likewow, I can really relate to this
when I look at people in thepast.
This is really.
This is human right.
It's a human experience up with a wide range

(12:06):
of strange theories, and one ofthose strange theories I think
it was something that really wasinvented in the 18th and 19th
century that has seeped into thepopular consciousness for
strange reasons is that medievalpeople didn't particularly care
about their children.
Because, well, they had so manychildren and because child
mortality was so high, theycouldn't sort of, you know,
emotionally bear to actuallycare about their children, and

(12:34):
that is plainly untrue,absolutely untrue.
That is part of a very weirdidea that medieval people were
just like, just kind of low-key,awful.
And in reality you find reallymeaningful, really beautiful

(13:00):
examples of people mourningtheir children when they die.
For example, there's a.
There's a very famous poemsimply called pearl um that was
written in the oh, I was aboutto say 14th century, but my
brain is now saying it wasn'tthe 15th century, it's either
the 14th or 15th century inengland, um, and it is reading

(13:27):
it.
It is very hard not to haveyour heart break, um, because it
is probably a man um mourninghis young you know toddler aged
daughter who has died, uh, in away that is heart-wrenchingly

(13:48):
beautiful, even to this very day, and it immediately puts paid
to that myth that people didn'tcare about their children.
Um, and we have, you know, lotsof evidence besides um, but
that that's one of those thingsthat where literature, though it
is strange, and though theworldview even of the poet who

(14:08):
wrote pearl is odd to us, um,especially if you're not, you
know someone who's really really, really into, uh, you know very
old-fashioned christianity, umthat, uh, even if you're not
part of that worldview, you canstill feel the emotionality deep

(14:30):
within that piece of writing.
It's really quite something.

Lara Ayad (14:33):
Yeah, yeah, and I'll share a link to that, to part of
that poem in the show notes aswell, because I think that's
important to see and I thinkit's translated to for at least
for modern readers to somewhatunderstand if I am oh, there are
several editions of it that areavailable.

You can yeah you might be able to fight your
way through the, uh, the middleEnglish if you are so inclined,
but if you're not and let's bereal, most people aren't um that
there are many, uh, moderneditions that are out yeah.

Lara Ayad (15:02):
So it sounds like you have seen different types of
myths crop up about the middleages, and these myths are like
part of the modern consciousness, as you called it.
Can you tell me firstly we'llget back to some of these other
myths in just a minute but howdid you get so interested in the
middle ages to begin with?
You describe how people wholike this is they're kind of

(15:23):
weird on some level.
I think all art historians areweird, right, like I don't even
do the.
Middle Ages.
I think I'm kind of weird, sohow did you get into this?
How did you I get into ?
is one of those things.
I don't have a Rosetta Stonefor this for myself, looking
back, I've been a nerdy, weirdkid my whole life.

(15:48):
I was, you know, I think if Ihad to point at a few things in
childhood that definitely had animpact, I think they were.
I don't know if you are of asimilar age to me to have
encountered these, but therewere books by david mccauley.
Um, it was a famous, uh, authorand illustrator of kids books

(16:12):
and he had a couple of books, heuh, he.
His most famous book is the waythings work, but he also did
books called Castle andCathedral and these were
lavishly illustrated but alsokind of highly technical
drawings of these sort ofarchitectural wonders and kind

(16:36):
of exploring through art, a wayof explaining and teaching kids
like how this architecture showshow these people lived and how
the architecture worked andthings like that.
And so I'm sure that there wereother things besides this.

(16:58):
You know I started readingfantasy novels very early and
things like that.
You know there was a lot ofthat, but that's that's, I think
, the earliest thing that I canremember and I also remember
from there probably not at allunrelated to that that I was
trying to build model castlesout of balsa wood and crystal

(17:18):
light containers when I was akid.
Um, just because I we hadcrystal light containers around
and that was the closest thing Icould get to, like a
cylindrical tower kind of thing,um, and would save my pocket
money and buy like at thewhatever the predecessor to the
Hallmark store was, buy littleknight figurines and like
populate that.
You know, this is the kind ofkid that I was.

(17:39):
I was doing like, effectively,model trains when I was like
five and six.
It was crazy yeah, just goes to show you too, like
people throughout the ages getbored and then they do amazing
creative things with it too.
Right, it wasn't?

just like monks and scribes and say the 12th
century, it's also modern neverunderestimate yeah, never
underestimate the power of a, ofa bored kid, um, I mean
destructive or constructivepower.
I'll for all the parents outthere.
I don't want to say that it'snecessarily always constructive
and stuff yeah

Lara Ayad (18:12):
So this is so you were like making all of these
different types of of kind ofconstructed worlds, almost of
knights and things like that,and yeah, um, yeah, and so it's
it interesting because you'renot the only one to be
fascinated with the Middle Ages,that you know.
You see the Middle Ages allover in movies like the Green

(18:32):
Knight, joan of Arc, vikings,it's it's an all over movies and
shows.
So what do you think aboutHollywood's portrayal of the
Middle Ages?
that's a big question but do youwhat kind?
of what are other.
In other words, what kind ofpicture do these movies and
shows paint of the medievaltimes in general, I mean?

bad low-key bad picture like, okay, so I.
So, on the one hand, I thinkit's very easy to kind of like,
pick apart the historicalinaccuracies that are in these
movies and like, people can andhave done this for ages.
You could spend just just yourentire life effectively picking

(19:19):
apart the?
Um historical inaccuracies.
But I think the the reallyinteresting next step that you
can take is to say, okay, sowhat do these historical
inaccuracies mean?
Like, why do we tell this storyin this particular way?

(19:42):
Because you know, movies are,they're not.
These aren't documentaries.
And even when they aredocumentaries, they're not
necessarily like particularly uh, they're not usually
particularly um accurate,specific, they're not.
You know, they aren't perfect.
There's no such thing asperfect.

(20:03):
There's no such thing asperfect.
There's no such thing asperfect in an artistic medium at
all.
Um, and so what do thesedepictions of this past time say
about our own society?
Um, there are, there are kindof two, broadly speaking, like
two visions of the middle agesthat exist in sort of uh,

(20:26):
contemporary films.
There's the dark side of themiddle ages and there's the
light side of the middle ages.
I'll start with the light side,actually, because that's a
little bit more fun and actuallythese days a lot less common.
Um, that's the sort of lightand bright, cheery middle ages.
It's the like robin hoodtrumping through the forest.
Everything's very, um, veryprimary color, unsurprising.

(20:50):
A lot of times this is what youget in animated films, stuff
for kids, things like that.
Uh, disney middle ages uh, oftenreally uh relies on this idea
of, like, cheery adventures andheroic nights going out into the
world and and and saving theday, and princesses and towers
and things like that.
Um, so that was really in voguein children's entertainment and

(21:15):
adult entertainment.
If you think about, um, say,the musical camelot, um, and how
it really became iconic for atime period in American history
and like an American presidency,even the presidency of JFK that
this light and bright, cheeryMiddle Ages was very much in

(21:40):
vogue until about the 1970s.
And then there's a switch tothe dark, the dark ages, the
dark version of the middle ages,the dark and brooding and blood
soaked.
And I'm gonna stop doing allthat vocal fry, otherwise I'm
not gonna be able to continuethis uh interview.

(22:01):
Um, but the sort of dark andbrooding there's, you know
everything is blood and if it'snot blood it's mud, and then
it's not mud, it's shit.
You know that.
It's like everyone is coveredin some kind of foreign
substance.
Um that?
usually murdering oh,undoubtedly horrible foreign
substance.
Um, and even if it's a goodsubstance, it's horrible, um and

(22:24):
that and uh, everyone is doingterrible things to one another,
uh, and and that the there'skind of a one-upsmanship that we
are seeing in in in movies, inliterature.
I mean, these are theseartistic forms are all cyclical,
um and and interrelated withone another, because, of course,
you know, uh, game of thronestakes its influence from a lot

(22:45):
of these earlier really darkdepictions of uh of the middle
ages, both in film and inliterature, and then game of
thrones itself has turned into atv show that now is continuing
to influence people's uhimaginations, both in literature
and in, you know, in everyartistic medium as well.
And so this dark and doom,soaked uh and the light and

(23:08):
merry middle ages, like neitherof them are especially accurate
really, um, or kind of both ofthem can be accurate to
different places in differentperiods.
There were bad times and therewere good times and there were
bad, and some people's goodtimes were other people's bad

(23:29):
times, um, and the interestingthing is what happened in the
1970s that shifted ourunderstanding of the past, of
this past that we so oftenfantasize about, that we so
often use as fodder for escapism.
Why did it turn dark?

(23:52):
And you see that in a lot ofpopular culture, not just in
medieval stuff, you know thisfilm of the 1970s is very
famously quite gritty, quite,you know.
It's the turn towards realismand away from fantasy and things
like that, and the middle agestries to follow suit, but the
but it sort of tries and thengets full, goes full grimdark,
where, whereas dramatic cinemagoes in a somewhat different

(24:15):
direction, um, and I think thatthere's, you know there's a lot
of things that are happening, atleast in american popular
culture.
You know there's, I don't know,political upheavals with the
nixon administration, butthere's also social upheavals
with, um, you know, the, the oilcrises and crises around the

(24:35):
world.
The 1980s has its own kind ofsemi-heroic return in some ways,
and you can see that a littlebit in depictions of the middle
ages, like with, uh, excalibur,the, the movie, if you ever saw
that in the 80s movies or thelike big 80s movies where
everyone in the middle ages kindof suddenly has big hair.

Lara Ayad (24:56):
But even like Robin Hood.
They did a Robin Hood around, Ithink was.
Was it the late 80s and early90s sort of Kevin Costner the
Kevin Costner one?
Right, yeah, prince of Thievesthat that was, that was.
Was it the late 80s and early90s sort of Kevin Costner the
Kevin Costner one?
Right, yeah, prince of Thievesthat that was.

That was when I grew up with.
Um, but Prince of Thieves it's,it's adventuresome and it's
heroic, but there's a real darkundertone.
I mean, the, the Sheriff ofNottingham is like a violent
psychopath, obviously the bestcharacter in the film by far
because it's the late, greatAlan Rickman, but still, um, you
know, carve your heart out witha spoon, cousin.

(25:29):
Um, that the darkness was thefun, was the fun of the thing,
um, which in and of itself iskind of this interesting, uh,
this interesting thing thatwe've kind of became so inured
to this idea that the middleages is this dark thing, that we
, that we almost that, thatwe're not just going there to

(25:50):
feel bad about things or to feelmoral superiority, but because
it's a dark place.
That's why we go there, um, for, for reasons, and that is even
continued into the like epicturn that we've seen in films
ever since, say, lord of therings.
Um, the lord of the ringstrilogy was, I mean, massive in

(26:10):
terms of, uh, fantasy films, buthad a huge impact even on films
that are ostensibly depicting,you know, uh, things that were
supposed supposedly actuallyhappened.
Um, right, people do associate.

Lara Ayad (26:24):
People do associate the Lord of the Rings trilogy
very much with the middle ages,even though technically it's not
supposed to be set in that time, Right, which is really
fascinating.
And then there's of course thiswhole mythical place of the
middle earth, right.

Which kind?

Lara Ayad (26:37):
of evokes that idea and the idea of the middle ages,
and you know, shires andpastures and all that absolutely
.

I mean jr r tolkien was a famous medievalist
.
I mean he was.
He was deeply entrenched inmedieval culture and so the lord
of the rings is as as kind ofour prototypical um fantasy
literature.
He imbued it with as muchmedieval culture, particularly
early medieval culture, um, ashe could, because that's

(27:08):
something that he was, you know,deeply interested in and
excited by.
I mean that are here arespeaking old english, basically
they're quoting beowulfeffectively, so like same same,
more or less, and so you they're.
They're, unsurprisingly, afterthis, the gangbusters success of
the lord of the rings films,there was this sort of
revitalization of the middleages as seen through this epic

(27:32):
lens.
But that epic lens still iswithin that very dark, uh, very
kind of gritty, mud-covercovered, blood-soaked, not quite as
grimdark as Game of Thronesultimately took it.
But you can see the path, youcan create the dotted line on

(27:54):
the pathway from Lord of theRings to Game of Thrones through
all of these very dark andforeboding thickets.

Lara Ayad (28:00):
Yeah, you know it's interesting that you're pointing
out almost a duality about howcontemporary or modern culture
views the Middle Ages.
You've got the bright, shinyCamelot, you know knights and
princesses side, and then you'vegot the really dark, gritty,
everyone's covered in poop andkilling each other thing.
So this is interesting becauseit's it's I'm trying to figure

(28:25):
out.
Where did this idea cause wecould talk about, like where the
really romanticized over, yetoverly idealized view of the
middle ages comes from in asecond.
But I've more often than notheard people or even I've even
read histories as a kid wherethey refer to the middle ages as
the Dark Ages.
So where does this idea of theMiddle Ages as the Dark Ages

(28:49):
come from, and is that accurate?
I mean, I thought there was theCrusades, you know, kind of
earlier on in antiquity, andthen there's like I mean there
were battles being fought, butto what extent is it?
To what extent is that true,and was it actually the Dark
Ages?

Oh, man, you have asked the question that
medievalists love, slash, hateto answer all the time.
Okay, so where did this comefrom?
So I'm going to apologizebecause I don't have chapter and
verse queued up, but if youlook, in my first book I talk
about this extensively but,effectively, what happened was

(29:30):
in the 15th and 16th centuries,in Italy in particular, there
was a group of effectivelyphilosophers.
They called themselveshumanists and they were very
devoted to the idea that theywere doing something
fundamentally new, that theirway of thinking, their way of

(29:53):
moving through the world andthat their ideas were something
new because they theyeffectively divided history up,
uh, in two, three parts.
They were the first people todefine the world of the

(30:16):
classical world.
So, with the greeks, the romans, what you would call antiquity,
the ancient world, all thatstuff, um, that that was sort of
the bright, uh, glory era ofcivilization, and that was
something that they themselveswanted to emulate.
That they were looking back tothe great philosophers of the

(30:38):
greeks and the romans for theirinspiration, for their art, for
their architecture, for theirphilosophies, for their art, for
their architecture, for theirphilosophies, for their you name
it.
That they thought that, yeah,that's the stuff, and that there

(31:11):
was this intervening period,these middle of darkness, that
was effectively best swept underthe rug.
I, a medievalist, find all ofthis really funny, because this
is very much like a kid who is akid, who is writing all about

(31:42):
how their grandparents were likethe coolest people in the world
and how awesome they were, andwearing all of their
grandfather's inherited clotheswhile living in their parents
basement.
Because the only reason why anyof the classical art literature
anything survived at all isbecause medieval people were

(32:04):
constantly copying on it andcopying it, expanding on it,
expounding on it, creating newthings, creating the technology
that would then allow them tocreate, technologies that would
allow them to do thearchitectural things that they
wanted to do.
So it's like, yeah, sure,you're doing some new things,
but like, calm down a bit, man,just calm down a bit.

(32:29):
And and also, as a medievalist,I really have to point out that
a lot of the you know that wetend to think of the middle ages
as like this garbage pit ofhistory and where everything
that was bad, that happened inthe past, really happened in the
middle ages.
Um, and it's got such a, it'ssuch a potent idea that it's

(32:53):
kind of like.
It's like a black hole.
It's got this gravity wellwhere it's actually pulling bad
things from the periods aroundit into itself.
So, for example, you knowmedieval torture, let's talk
about medieval torture oh mygoodness, sure, yeah, like they.
Okay, let's be real, like theydid torture people during the

(33:15):
middle ages.
But there was this, there'sthis idea.
I mean, you go across Europeand there's, you know, torture
museums everywhere that willhave all of these torture
devices that they ostensiblyused in the Middle Ages.
But almost all of those torturedevices are actually inventions
of weird 19th century peoplewho were creating things

(33:36):
entirely out of like whole cloth, effectively, and that torture
really became a thing.
That torture was far more I'mloathe to call it sophisticated,
but maybe advanced is a way ofputting it and much more
commonly used as a method ofpunishment in the so-called age

(34:00):
of enlightenment.
Um, not least because that iswhen they got a more and more
accurate understanding of humanphysiology, which allowed them
to do things to human physiologythat's incredible.

Lara Ayad (34:15):
It's because you'd think that, like, learning more
about human physiology wouldresult in us being able to do
things to help people and makethem healthier, but we which we
do.
But then there's this otherside of it, this flip side,
that's coming up in the supposedenlightenment age, like 1700,
like 1600, 1700, so on, wherethey're using this new knowledge

(34:37):
to do terrible things to people, but they're projecting that
darkness that they've createdonto people in the past, onto,
like the parents.
Right, it's like the angstyteenager in the basement you
were describing, and they'relike pissed off at their parents
like yeah, and let's not eventalk about slavery and
colonialism.

I mean, the inventions of the so-called
renaissance, so-called Age ofEnlightenment, are truly
horrifying.
You know things that have beenlet out of Pandora's box by
these so-called enlightenedhumanists that simply weren't
present in the same way in theMiddle Ages at all, present in

(35:21):
the same way in the middle agesat all.
Um, and so it's this funnything where we today look back
on the middle ages and verycommonly, we've come up with
this understanding that themiddle ages is kind of where
everything good in history goesto die, when in reality, every
age has its atrocities and everyage has its good and bad.
And if you have someone in thepast or present talking about

(35:42):
how theirs is the greatest agethat ever happened and they
themselves are the smartestperson that ever lived, maybe
don't believe them.

Lara Ayad (35:53):
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
I think that's a really that'sa really interesting observation
and it's making me wonder,because it looks like a lot of
like kind of going back toHollywood.
It kind of looks like thesefilms are almost playing on the
broken story, the sort ofmisleading narrative, if you

(36:13):
will, that 18th and 19th centuryscholars made about the Middle
Ages.
And I'm wondering are there anyshows or movies that you think
are particularly off the markwhen it comes to portraying the
Middle Ages and, if so, likewhat's your, what's your beef
with them?

Yeah, oh, let's see I am which ones I?
I think all of them are off themark in different ways.
I think the ones that reallyannoy me are the ones that are
off the mark in boring ways.
You know, like, you know, I, I,I like, I hated the end of game

(36:52):
of thrones just as much asanybody, um, and in no small
part because there were so manyinteresting ways and you know,
with with historical parallelsperhaps, that they could have
gone, that they ultimately sortof chose, that they seem to have
chosen the most conventionaland and uninteresting way to end

(37:19):
it possible, um, and that the Idon't know the depiction, the
depiction of a medieval-esqueland, because I mean, people are
going to quibble with me, andthen it's like oh, people,
always, when I, whenever I, as amedievalist, want to talk about
something like lord of therings or came to thrones,
they're like oh it's not.
It's not history.

(37:39):
It's like, yeah, I know it'snot history, but it's very
clearly based in history and theauthors.
You know.
George rr martin has talkedextensively about how, um, the
the atrocious things that he'sdepicting in his books were
drawn from actual historicalevents, which, yeah, yeah, fair

(38:03):
People got up to some nastystuff, but at the end of the day
, it's a question of like, whatdoes a normal day look like, you
know, and a normal day inWesteros is not a day that I
would like to encounter verymuch why so?

(38:24):
well, oh, why?
So?
Yeah, because it seems likeit's a place where empathy has
gone to die.
You know, it's a seems like aplace where where people, where
people are so interested inpower that they have forgotten
about community, and where it isa place that is so and a show

(38:50):
that is so solely focused onthese people who are
participating in kind of theworst.
It's.
It's like succession, right,you know that they're depicting
these really terrible people atthe upper echelons of society
and not and and not seeming tounderstand that they're terrible

(39:13):
people and also not seeming to,in a way that succession, I
think, does pretty well.
Succession seems to understandthat these people are terrible,
should be, should be mocked, andthat they are kind of the
exception.
I mean, they're they're.
They're not the exception, butthey are the exception um, that
these are really really awfulpeople, whereas in game of

(39:33):
thrones you never get the sensethat these are the exception.
You get the sense that this isjust like, this is just how the
world is and everybody's kind ofterrible.

Lara Ayad (39:40):
It's like yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting that you
mentioned this, paul, because Iwas just on instagram a few
days ago and I'm sorry there wassome type of I do like.
I do, I love my followers onInstagram, but I do.
I try to find accounts thatshare something historically

(40:03):
interesting about the past, andI found one I account I won't
name it, but they were they.
It was something about liketrying to pique people's
interest in the middle ages andit was maybe, but the way that
they did it was sort of likethey played into a lot of the
stereotypes about the middleages and one person in the
comments said you know, um, Iget some information.

(40:27):
Then they were being totallydeadpan, serious, paul.
They're like I get someinformation about the middle
ages, you know, playing videogames and watching shows, and
then I'll fill in some of thegaps, occasionally visiting
museums and that's a way to fillin the gaps.
And I thought that was reallyinteresting, because it seems
like some people areunderstanding these fictional,

(40:52):
you know, creations and stories,like video games and movies, as
a fantasy, but they're alsotreating it as like historical
reality too and as a way toactually understand the middle
ages.
So there seems is this is whatdo you think of that like?
How would you as a, as a publicmedievalist, how do you manage
that type of um world view thatI think some people have when

(41:16):
they're playing with video gamesand they're watching movies and
shows?

yeah, about the middle ages yeah, I mean,
that's, that's the medieval,that's the big thing that a lot
of medievalists wring theirhands around, uh, especially
whenever they're engaging withpopular culture in any way.
It's like, oh, you know, willsomeone think of the children?
Um, that kind of thing, and I,yeah, uh, it is a concern.
I'm really impressed by thatcommenter.

(41:41):
Actually, whether they uh,whether they realized it or not,
they were being way more astutethan most people are about the
sources of their information.
Most people, if you ask themlike, how do you learn about
history, they would say, oh well, you know, I I'll, I oh, I read
and I remember, you know I orthey'll either say like I don't
know anything, or they say Iread, I listen to podcasts, I go

(42:02):
to you know, I go to museumsand then maybe occasionally I'll
film a video game, whereas inreality it's, I think that's
actually inverted.
I think that most people are um,engaging most and most often
with popular culture.
The trick's in the name it'spopular, you know, and then they

(42:23):
are supplementing it withsomewhat more formal, you know,
more academically sanctioned, ifyou will, versions of history.
But this was really one of thecore questions at the heart of
my first book, the Middle Agesand Popular Imagination.
So, effectively, what I did wasI put on my social scientist

(42:48):
hat for once, not just ahumanist but also a social
scientist and I got togethergroups of young British people
and and I talked with them firstof all about their ideas about
the middle ages and I asked them, you know what, what?
For example?
I asked them like, what doesthe term middle ages bring to
mind?
Like, when I say middle ages,what are the things?

(43:10):
Just start rattling, you know,uh, stream of consciousness is
like what are the things that itbrings to mind?
Doing the same also with theword medieval, because
interestingly, they aredifferent words, they are
different terms even though theypoint to the same thing.
They actually have differentimplications.
And then I would talk with themfor a long focus group

(43:32):
interviews about what theythought the Middle Ages were
what they felt, what they feel.
The middle ages were what they,what they felt, what they feel.
The word medieval means, youknow, and in and in any
direction that they wanted to go.
And then, uh, I sat them downand I showed them a series of
three films, um, three moviesover on on three separate

(43:53):
occasions.
Um, and after each uh movie Iwould sit down with him and talk
with him about.
I said, okay, so, like, firstof all, what do you remember
from the movie?
Um, what and how does thisrelate to the things that we
talked about before?
Like, did this show yousomething that you um, that you

(44:15):
expect?
This?
Did this show you something new?
Do you feel you learnedanything?
Do you feel like there werethings that, what parts of it
did you think were accurate,what parts of it did you think
weren't accurate, stuff likethat you know a whole gamut can
I ask which movies did you showthem?

Lara Ayad (44:32):
can you share that?

I, yeah, I think that's, I think that's not
, I think that's not too much ofa spoiler, yeah, so I I chose
the movies based on, based ontheir popularity.
So this, this study, wasoriginally done in 2010.
And it was the movies that hadcome out over the past 10 years
that had done the best in theBritish box office.

(44:53):
And so those movies were uh,beowulf, the robert zemeckis
animated beowulf.
Um, kingdom of heaven, the epicfilm by ridley scott.
Uh, depicting the crusades.
Um, and again, controversialchoice, but I felt like it was
too popular to ignore.
Um was lord of the rings.

(45:15):
I didn't show them the wholelord, it wasn't like a nine hour
like lord of the rings fest,and so, assuming that people had
some exposure to the lord ofthe rings, I just I showed them
the return of the king, becausethat was the most um, that was
the conclusion of them and thatwas the one that I think, in a
lot of ways, has some of themost medieval elements to it,

(45:37):
because I feel like and this isa tangent but I feel like the
Lord of the Rings can kind of belooked at as actually traveling
not just through space, butalso kind of back in time as
they go.
But that's a whole differentside.
And so that also is thechoosing those three films,
though it was using a differentway of choosing, choosing those

(46:00):
three films, though it was usinga different way of choosing.
That also allowed me to findthree films along a kind of
spectrum, because on the onehand you've got Ridley Scott's
film Kingdom of Heaven, which isostensibly trying to depict
events that actually happenedwith people who actually existed
.
You have Lord of the Rings,which is entirely fantastical,
written by a contemporary authorthat is basing a lot of his

(46:20):
work in the Middle Ages, butthat it is in a world entirely
separate from our own.
And then you have Beowulf,which is the product of a
medieval imagination.
It is a fantasy movie and it issomeone who almost certainly
didn't exist and definitelydidn't fight the monsters and
dragons that he is supposed toin the movie, um, but so it is

(46:41):
undeniably medieval, but it isalso work or fantasy.
And so you've got this sort ofthree points along the spectrum,
from fantasy to reality, um,and there were some interesting
conclusions that kind of came upalong there.
But to to return to youroriginal question, which was
like should we be worried aboutpeople consuming all this

(47:03):
popular culture and learningtheir history from it?
Um, and the answer is yeah, butnot as much as you think and
probably not in the way that youthink.
Um that, by and large, not inthe way that you think.
Um, that, by and large, most ofthe people that I studied, I

(47:24):
found that the things that theybelieved at the end of the movie
the things that they believedand that they were able to most
easily, uh, retain, and whenthey were describing the movie
that they would describe mostaccurately, so it was something
that clearly stuck in theirmemory past were the things that
most closely aligned with thethings that they already thought
, the things they alreadybelieved, so something that gave

(47:46):
new details or new, you know,new life to a previously
existing idea is there anexample that comes to mind for
you of how that played out?
Well, I can easily give you acounterexample for one Sure,

(48:18):
because if it was something thatdidn't fit, if they saw
something, on screen that didn'tfit into their prior
understandings, they wouldeither just forget it or they
would misremember the film to bemore like fascinating.
Yeah, the misrememberings wereweird.
Um, like I had someonedescribing in great detail the
watching kingdom of heaven,which is about the crusades, and
so there are templars andhospitallers and things like
that.
But there was one person whodescribed in great detail the

(48:41):
round table that they were allswearing allegiance around.
There's no round table in thatmovie, there's no round table at
all.
Um, and that they were all sortof, and she was describing them
very much in an arthurian,chivalric, knightly kind of
manner when in reality, like inthis movie, the knights,

(49:02):
templars, are like murderingpsychopaths.
They're awful I mean thehospitalers are depicted as
being, you know, better, betterthan, but the, the templars are
like, just the worst.
They're the antagonists, um, andthis person had really
misremembered in a very heroic,very arthurian, even with the

(49:23):
imagery of the round table beingkind of inserted into her
memory, um, in a way that'sreally interesting and a little
worrying, um, and so to somedegree, I think that we do, we,
we definitely should be worriedabout pop culture, but more

(49:45):
holistically than individually.
We shouldn't be worried as muchabout the next thing that comes
out, you know, down the pike,because people are, oh, you know
, people are sponges and they'rejust going to believe
everything that you see.
Um, I don't think that's true,but I do think that there are,
that it's a long evolution,starting probably in childhood,

(50:08):
um, and that children might bemore inclined to believe a
little more holistically some ofthe things that they are seeing
.
And that is the genesis pointof a lot of these, a lot of
these core ideas that ultimatelyget built out and built out and
built out over the course ofour lives.

Lara Ayad (50:27):
Yeah, yeah, and you know it's it's.
First of all, I think it's sogreat that you used your first
book to start tackling this bigcore issue in public medievalist
studies about, like, how doesthe modern public perceive the
Middle Ages and what kinds ofstories have we told about it.
But you have this new book thatyou've co-written called the

(50:49):
Devil's Historians.
So tell us a bit about the bookand, in particular, what are
some?
What are some things you revealin the book regarding race in
medieval times?
Because I know, before westarted recording, you've told
me that modern depictions ofmedieval times have some racial

(51:09):
undertones.
So can you elaborate on that abit within the context of your
new book?

yeah, yeah, okay, so the devil's historians.
Uh, as the name would imply, um, it's a.
It's about some difficult stuff.
It is specifically about theways in which the middle ages
have been used by extremists,particularly, particularly

(51:37):
right-wing extremists, to propup their ideologies.
This is something that has beenhappening for a very long time,
but really focusing on the 19thcentury to the present day, or
at least the present day uponpublishing, was published in

(51:57):
2020 so that gives you a senseof what we're talking about, and
in it we try to be even-handed.
but also we don't stay out ofpolitics and so we talk about
the ways in which, say, forexample, the extreme right in
Europe that is still haunting ustoday, imagery and ideas, or at

(52:24):
least their misrepresentationof the Middle Ages and medieval
ideas as a way of justifying,you know, racism, particularly

(52:50):
Islamophobia, but also sexismand misogyny, which you can only
imagine the ways in which thathas been used, and even just
this idea of sort of heroicpurpose of a people and of a
nation, the idea of nationalismbeing projected back onto the

(53:18):
Middle Ages in a way that, youknow, even someone like Adolf
Hitler would be very, veryfamiliar with, since he used the
same exact thing.

Lara Ayad (53:28):
Right, he used that as a projection onto, I think
even like ancient Rome andancient antiquity, right he kind
?
Of tried to say oh, we're thenew aryan people and we are
descendants of you know, say thegreat ancient romans that he
projected this idea of like asort of race onto an ancient
history, but did he also use themiddle ages as well?
Is this something that you see?

yeah, mussolini was far more into the roman uh,
into the romans, and it's myunderstanding that hitler was
less into the romans and wasmuch more about this.
Um, germanic, quote-unquotebarbarian uh cast of the
quote-unquote aryan people, andI'm putting there's a lot of air
quotes to go around with allthis, because all of this is
crap, all of this historic likein case there was any question,

(54:12):
and there shouldn't be, this isall historical bunk.
Um, but you know his, he, he,he fashioned his regime as the
third reich.
Well, the first reich was theholy roman empire of the middle
ages.
Um, and there and a number ofpeople within his orbit were

(54:35):
incredibly enamored of this ideaof a unitary Germanic people.
That can be projected back intothe Middle Ages and even beyond
that, and it even gets sillyBelieving in these esoteric
things.
Like you know, indiana Joneswasn't completely fictional in

(55:00):
that Hitler actually sentarchaeological teams out to find
the Holy Grail, which webelieve to be like, patently
ridiculous now, but that theywere looking for these medieval
sources of power and things likethat.
But in a racial way, talkingabout Hitler is actually kind of

(55:25):
a good place to start becausein a lot of ways, in a lot of
ways, hitler?
how to put this exactly?
So I'm not.

(55:45):
This isn't one of my ideas andI can't remember who came up
with it, so, my apologies, I'llhave to uh, I will have to find
a source inside it, but the ideaof that racism is older than
race.
Is that our ways of creatingracial hierarchies and our ways

(56:12):
of inflicting discriminationupon other people predate our
invention of a system thatjustified those actions that
racism was?
A was, first and foremost, asystem that allowed us to feel
okay with the horrible thingsthat we as a society were

(56:33):
already doing, right, um, andone of the first racialized
people, if not the firstracialized people, um, were
actually jewish people.
Um, that and that is one of thereally, oh, one of the really
challenging but interestingparts of living in portugal,

(56:56):
because it was here, the IberianPeninsula, where that really
first started to take shape,that in 1492, columbus sailed
the ocean blue.
But, additionally, one of theother things that happened was
that the Jews were evicted, werebanished from Spain, along with

(57:20):
the Muslims too, if Iunderstand correctly.

Lara Ayad (57:22):
Right, so both Muslims and Jews?

Yeah, yes both the Muslims and Jews right, that
many of those Jewish peoplethen went to Portugal and four
years later, portugal followedsuit and Portugal expelled their
Jewish population in 1496 andfor it declared in 1496,

(57:45):
happened in 1497 and but that itwas not really an expulsion per
se, especially in Portugal, butalso in Spain was that it was
an attempt at a forcedconversion because they it was
many of the people, particularlythe crown didn't actually want

(58:07):
these Jewish people to leave,that they were, you know,
successful people, that theywere very well-educated people
and that in general, they hadactually, up until that point,
they had held, some of them,very high positions within the
court.
That it was an attempt atforced conversion and many of
them did convert, but that therewas a widespread understanding

(58:35):
among the Christian populationthat, oh well, these people
didn't really convert, thatthere was a conspiratorial tone
that came about whereby theseJewish quote-unquote new
Christians continued to bediscriminated against within

(58:58):
society and looked on withsuspicion and in many and in
some cases, uh killed um, and itwas actually because of this
that the inquisition was startedin uh, spain and portugal as
well, to root out theseso-called um new christians.
Um.

(59:18):
Now, why do I say this is hasto do with race.
Well, um, especially in spain,but also in portugal, that this,
that there is a keenunderstanding around this issue
of conversion, that changesfundamentally for these

(59:39):
christians, this idea of judaismbeing a religion that a person
can freely convert away from, tobe something that is in the
blood and that is a keycornerstone to racial thinking,
to racialized thinking.
Um, and it was in spain that wegot the first, it was in spain

(01:00:04):
that we got the first, theliterally called it limpies of
the sangria, purity of bloodlaws that stated the exact
number of, the exact sort ofpercentage of jewish ancestry.
You were allowed to have to beconsidered, effectively, a full
citizen, to be, uh, to beconsidered a person who could
reach certain heights within asociety, and that if you had

(01:00:25):
more Jewish blood than that,then you were not allowed
because you were consideredsuspect or lesser than.

Lara Ayad (01:00:33):
And that started around the 1600s.
You said.

Paul Sturtevant (01:00:37):
Yep During that great age of enlightenment.
Right's a good, there it isagain you know exactly, and so
this is where the prejudice thathad been leveled against the
jewish people for um, forcenturies, um, had became
systematized into this I theseracial ideas that were then

(01:01:03):
transferred and reappropriatedin the colonies, in the Spanish
and Portuguese colonies and thenlater in the American colonies,
as a way of discriminatingagainst Native people and Black
people as well, discriminatingagainst, uh, native people and

(01:01:26):
black people as well, um, and asa way of understanding, you
know, as a way of themjustifying why it was a right
and moral and correct thing forthem to do so is it then?

Lara Ayad (01:01:35):
so, so kind of like going back to like how modern
culture depicts the middle agesracially, and we've talked a
little bit about like the riseof the stirring fascism in the
1930s with Mussolini and Hitler,and we talked about like kind
of like, how did race, how didlike race even become a thing
emerging from almost religiousdiscrimination in the, really in

(01:01:56):
the enlightenment period?
But, like when you see a lot ofmovies and shows, video games
that portray the middle ages,everyone looks, um, not just
white, but specifically likekind of blonde, blue eyed whites
right because white itself is.
It's a very modern idea, theidea of race.
So it's like this was thisactually accurate?

(01:02:17):
Like what did the?
Because I mean I know also themiddle ages spanned the entire
globe, right, so that in and ofitself trumps something of the
myth.
But could you, could you say alittle more about that type of
depiction of the middle ages ona racial level?

Yeah, yeah, or at least on a level that is very
hard for us to talk aboutwithout talking, without using
the word race, even though it'skind of a historical like that's
the thing, thing like we haveto like there has to be a big
asterisk, terminologically,around all of this, because it's
so difficult for us to talkabout people of different
origins without using the termrace, even though the term race

(01:02:54):
doesn't mean what we want it tomean.
So that caveat, like right upfront, the Middle Ages was
definitely more diverse than wetend to imagine it being.
It's the challenge that Ialways get when I talk about
this sort of thing, especiallyamong certain groups of

(01:03:16):
extremely online people, is theysay, oh well, exactly like what
percentage and exactly how many?
It's like we don't havecensuses.
We what percentage and exactlyhow many?
It's like like we don't havecensuses.
We don't know exactly how many,but we do know that people were
very present.
We know that there was, thatthere were african embassies in
rome in the 13th and 14thcenturies.
Like we know that there wasmovement all around the mediter.

(01:03:40):
I mean, until you know, fromancient Rome and before then, we
know that there were people,especially people who were
traders and travelers, who weregoing to any city of any size

(01:04:00):
during the Middle Ages,particularly as a way of you
know, the commerce andmercantile, the mercantile world
continues apace and so,especially if you were to go to
a large city, and especially ifyou were to go to the mercantile
centers and the docks, that youwould absolutely find people of
a wide range of shades, so tospeak.

(01:04:22):
But even before that, even intothe so-called early Middle Ages
, what people still occasionallyrefer to as the Dark Ages that
there is a lot more movementaround the continent of Europe
even than we tend to think, inno small part because of the
reach of the Catholic Church andthe way that the Catholic

(01:04:46):
Church was trying to unify thecontinent.
And so you find famous earlymedieval English archbishops
coming from Turkey and beingwidely accepted within you know
English aristocratic society asthe archbishop in england at the
time that there wasn't a, akeen understanding of this

(01:05:08):
person being, you know, beingfundamentally different from us
and being being othered in thesame way that you'd even find uh
today.
Um, and and also, it's veryimportant to note that during
much of what we call the MiddleAges, the center of the world,

(01:05:28):
so to speak, wasn't in Europe.
Europe wasn't the leader incommerce, technology, any kind
of metric that you want.
In many ways, asia was theworld during the Middle Ages,
whether that be the Islamicempires that sort of stretched

(01:05:51):
from the Atlantic, in many caseshalf the way across towards
India, india itself, which wasincredibly innovative and and
interesting at the time, andalso china, which was developing
incredible, uh, incrediblyinteresting technological things
and sociological things.
But the, the trade that was, um, the trade of ideas, not just,

(01:06:16):
you know, not just spices.
This trade of ideas, oftechnology, of philosophy, of
music, of, of all kinds ofthings that were ping-ponging
across the hemisphere, um, atthe time, is really astounding,
uh, as astounding to understand.
And all of those tradesinvolves movements of different

(01:06:38):
peoples encountering otherdifferent peoples and not just
doing so under a banner of war.
And if you need a final pieceof evidence for it, for this
sort of hemispherical world, forthis world in which people and
things can travel so freely.

(01:06:59):
The one thing that really kindof nails it for me is something
that I think that we can allfundamentally understand, uh,
based on our own personalexperience recently, and that is
plague because, um, the blackdeath ravaged the world, or at
least the hemisphere, in the14th century, and people tend to

(01:07:21):
imagine the Black Death asbeing a European thing.
It was not a European thing thatit originated, we think,
somewhere around Mongolia, butit affected China very deeply.
It spread across the Middle Eastand depopulated entire cities
across the Middle East, acrossNorth Africa, before finally,

(01:07:43):
finally finally spreading to thefarthest of far-flung reaches
of somewhere like England, whichwas a backwater of a backwater
at the time, and thenping-ponged different variants,
as we're experiencing with COVIDnow.
Different variants emerged andwould ping pong back and forth
across the hemisphere.

(01:08:03):
There have been epidemiologicalstudies, historical
epidemiological studies, thathave shown the ways in which
these variants sort of backedand forth and backed and forth,
you know, every decade or soacross the hemisphere, and so
that is a very dark example, butit shows something really
important and that is the way inwhich this world was connected,

(01:08:24):
not just in a occasional andtangential kind of way, but in a
fundamental way, in a waywhereby seeing people from other
places and seeing people fromother cultures was something
that you would only notexperience if you were someone

(01:08:45):
who made very much an effort tolive in a rural community by
yourself and never go onpilgrimage and never leave.

Lara Ayad (01:08:59):
I see, I see, yeah, it's like you're revealing a
middle ages that's global andyou're also revealing that, like
people in the middle ages, forthe most part, unless they're
making an effort, really werethrough pilgrimage, through all
these different things A lot ofit seems like religion plays
such a big role here reallycoming in contact with each
other.
I want to go back for a minute,cause you mentioned gender.

(01:09:20):
Quickly, I want to talk aboutmasculinity in the middle ages,
because I can't help but yeah, Iknow.
I know we've had such a rich,like longer, conversation, but I
can't, like I can't not letthis go.
So I can't help but notice theamount of the focus on knights
and men and stuff like that, andmovies about the middle ages

(01:09:42):
and video games, let's talk.
And movies about the middleages and video games, let's talk
about masculinity.
In the middle ages, waschivalry a thing?
What, how, what were men like?
I know that's such a bigquestion, but what was?
What were men like in themiddle ages?

yeah, oh boy, oh man, I, I, chivalry is this
item.
There are a lot of things thatwe misunderstand about the
middle ages, and I thinkchivalry is definitely like one
in line with what the gentry ofthe 19th century thought it

(01:10:29):
meant than what a medievalperson would have would have
thought it meant.
You know, the gentry of the19th century resuscitated the
idea of chivalry, um, as a wayof trying to, you know, to to
have a very class-oriented,performative sort of politeness,
uh, that allowed them to uhexpect sexual favors in return

(01:10:52):
for opening doors effectively.
Um, it's not that.
That is, uh, that is overbroadand probably unfair, but I'm,
I'm gonna stick with that onefor now.
Whereas in the middle ages, um,chivalry was very much a
warrior culture, um, it was awarrior culture and there were

(01:11:13):
definitely gendered elements toit.
But the people who were writingabout chivalry we're writing
about it as a way of effectivelyearning reputation, earning
reputation particularly withinthe, the warrior elite of the
middle ages, and the way thatyou win reputation, first and

(01:11:35):
foremost, is by winning battlesis by winning battles, often by
whatever means necessary.
That it's not about I willdisarm you and then allow you to
no, no, no, no, no like, if youhave to kick somebody in the
nuts in order to win, you dothat um that some of the most

(01:11:56):
successful knights of the perioduh were were people who, by you
know, 19th century standards,were absolute scoundrels.
Um william marshall, uh was avery famous um knight.
Uh was considered one of themost uh chivalric knights of his
age.
He rose from uh, you know hewas.
He was an aristocrat but a verylike lesser, born son of a

(01:12:21):
lesser uh no, lesser house inengland, and he rose to be
effectively the right hand ofseveral english monarchs um, not
least because of his success uhin tournaments.
But he got up to all manner ofshenanigans not up up to, and
including one example in whichhe was not even participating in

(01:12:43):
the tournament because he hadbroken his leg.
So he was sitting in the standswatching all of you know
watching the chaos play out.
And one of the fundamentalthings about tournaments was
that it was organized around thegrand melee.
So the great melee, which isnot a joust, it is effectively

(01:13:03):
well, you and your retinue, youand your group of knights, so
five or six guys, would go upagainst other groups of five or
six guys and you would beat theabsolute crap out of one another
and try to effectively take oneanother hostage.
And if you could take someonehostage, then that meant that
you could maybe take their armor, maybe take their horse, maybe,

(01:13:25):
you know, find some way to getthem to buy their freedom from
you.
So this is a way both to earnprestige but also to earn money.
Let's be real, so.
So he's watching all of thisplay out.
I'm watching this like intensechaos happen and a knight falls
off his horse in front of thestands onto his back, and at

(01:13:46):
which point William Marshall noteven in the tournament
whatsoever leaps over the stands, stands on the guy's neck
effectively and says I'm takingyou hostage.
So this is as if someone likeran in from the sidelines of a
football game, grabbed thefootball and ran it outside for

(01:14:08):
a touchdown at his own car,effectively.
And said you need to pay me inorder to get the football back.
Like yeah it's wild like and hethen this is just one example
like william marshall, got up toall kinds of shenanigans, and
this really gives you a sense ofthat there were rules, but that
the rules, that the first andforemost rule to all of this was

(01:14:29):
be good at what you do and be abadass and everything else is
secondary um, that there aredefinitely rules about, like who
you should and shouldn't fight,who you, what you should and
shouldn't do in certain socialcircumstances, and also who you
should and shouldn't shag, andwho you should and shouldn't
marry if you are a knight,because if you are a knight, for

(01:14:54):
example, it is very importantfor you to marry someone, but
not someone that you areparticularly in love with, or
not someone who you know.
No, no, no, no.
This is about money.
This is about money and landand power and prestige, and so
it's a question of like don't bemessing with anybody lower than
you in in station.
If you, if it's someone who ismarriageable, who is of an

(01:15:17):
appropriate station, okay, thisis how you behave around them.
If it is someone who is yoursuperior, this is how you behave
around them.
If it is someone who is yoursuperior, this is how you behave
around them as a way of tryingto, you know, retain your
prospects and things like that.
It has very little to say aboutsomeone who is not a marriage
prospect.
You know, there's no helping oldladies across the street.

(01:15:37):
Nobody cares about old ladiestrying to cross the street, it's
just whatever, and if they'reof a lower social status than
you, they are.
The the only time in which someof these manuals talk about the
lower classes is about sayingdon't fall in love with them.
If you're interested, just likehave sex with them.

(01:15:58):
You even rape them if you want,and it's fine, and just like
leave them because they're notworth dealing with.
So don't even even bother.
It's really, it's reallydespicable stuff Like I want to
be absolutely clear on that.
And so this idea of chivalrythat we have in our mind and all
of these things, you know,helping people and and
performative politeness andstuff like that like absolutely

(01:16:20):
not part of this culture andthat there are some admirable
qualities to the medieval, youknow, to the medieval culture of
chivalry, particularly in termsof, like, being the best you
could possibly be at what you doand there being an honor in
that.
That.
That core of it, yeah, likethat core of it is kind of great
, but that there's a lot of itthat plays out in medieval

(01:16:43):
societies in ways that would bethat were incredibly toxic and
hurtful and harmful then andwould be insanely so now.

Lara Ayad (01:16:52):
Yeah, that we would really look down on now.
So it's like we have thisidealized image of chivalry and
even like masculinity in themiddle ages, but it was a little
more complicated than that.
And could sometimes result insome really, some really
terrible consequences too forpeople.
So let's, let's kind of moveforward.
Now you're in Portugal, and sotell me what you're doing in

(01:17:16):
Portugal and how are you are you?
Are you sharing things aboutthe history of the middle ages
with people there?
What are you up to?
I'm drinking a the history ofthe middle ages with people
there.
What are you up to?

I'm drinking a lot of wine.

Lara Ayad (01:17:26):
Wine is good here that's another reason I should
be jealous of you being inportugal, I mean you know it's.

It's not bad, it's not bad it's not bad um
yeah.
so what I am doing here is thatI've decided, after a career
working for the Smithsonian Iworked for the Smithsonian for
about 10 years but theSmithsonian doesn't really have
anything that's particularlymedieval in its collections, or

(01:17:54):
at least it doesn't focus on theMiddle Ages very much, and so
I'd always had this idea goingback quite a ways since I did my
PhD, um, of wanting to start atour company, a tour company
that is focused on presentinghistory in a better way, in a

(01:18:19):
new way, with all of itscomplexities and contradictions,
with all of, in a way that isdifferent from the ways that
I've encountered history beingpresented by uh, by tours in the
past.
Um, I'll be honest, I'vecertainly gone on history tours

(01:18:42):
when I've been to othercountries and a lot of times, a
lot of myths or like silly,facile stories, that that you,
that you sort of look atespecially if you're someone

(01:19:10):
who's really studied historyseriously and you go that can't
be right, that that, just thatdoesn't, that doesn't have the
whiff of truth or it doesn'tfeel like the whole story, it
doesn't, it just doesn't feelright.
You know it's a little too easy.
And then you know I've done thework in in some occasions and

(01:19:33):
I've looked it up and I said,yeah, that's not right.
It's not right and first, andinfuriatingly, in a lot of cases
, the actual history is notparticularly more difficult to
tell, and I think it's actuallya lot more interesting work with

(01:20:02):
and give feedback to the peoplewho are offering the tours
there of ways to redesign theirtours to incorporate more good
history and find ways of makingthat real history more
compelling and exciting, suchthat it wasn't necessarily just
repeating some of these veryfacile myths.
And so, uh, my wife and I havecome to portugal and we're in
the process of starting up ourtour company, which we are
calling Stories Abroad Tours.
You can look us up on Google,we have a website and thus far

(01:20:27):
we are offering well, we offer avariety of things, but
particularly focusing at themoment on private tours.
So, whether that just be a halfday or a full day of walking
around the city of Lisbon orsomething more involved, like
we've got our first big clientswhere we're doing a fully guided

(01:20:47):
nine-day tour experience of thecountry that's coming up, but
and everything in between.
And so, yeah, that's what we'retrying to offer.
We're trying to offer a littlebit of kind of a more, more of a
study abroad kind of experience, but something that would be
accessible for people of any age.

Lara Ayad (01:21:08):
so what's what's?
I know you.
I know you don't want to revealeverything, of course, because
you should take the tour if youwant to learn all the stories
abroad.
But could you, could you givelike a little snippet of
something like maybe somethingfrom medieval history in
portugal that you show people onyour stories abroad tours?
You think is really fun?

okay.
So one of the things that Ifind that's really interesting,
um, one of the things that Ifind really interesting about
historic buildings and, ofcourse, tours are a lot about
buildings right, the way thatbuildings are often presented to
look as if they're one thing,but in a lot of cases, if you
look just below the surface, youcan understand that they are

(01:21:49):
actually kind of a negotiationand a rebuilding over many, many
, many centuries and you cansometimes see the seams or the
scars where those things havebeen done.
So the most famous historicalbuilding, the most visited
historical building, at least inLisbon and I think in Portugal,
is the castle, the castle thatdominates the city skyline

(01:22:13):
Castelo de São Jorge, the Castleof Saint George, the Castelo de
São Jorge, this very famousmonument, this castle on the
hill.
But the really interestingthing about the castle is, if
you look at it and if you'velooked at other medieval castles
, it doesn't quite look right.

(01:22:35):
It's some of the things pokingout at.
You say, like that's concrete,that door that doesn't have an
archway, that doesn't have akeystone or anything like that.
What does that do?
Well, the castle has manystories to tell, but I think one
of the stories that is reallyimportant to understand and it

(01:22:59):
really says a lot aboutcontemporary portugal is the
fact that this building wasrebuilt in the late 1930s.
The reason why that's importantis in the late 1930s was the
rise of salazar.
Salazar was the portuguesedictator and and the Portuguese

(01:23:21):
fascist dictator, and he, as oneof his first actions, put out a

(01:24:06):
massive rebuilding regime tothe heroic idea of the Middle
Ages, that light and bright andcheery middle ages.
Well, it's also got a heroicelement to it too.
And so Salazar was trying toconnect himself particularly to
the first king of Portugal, donAlfonso Henrique.
Don Alfonso Henrique ostensiblyfounded the kingdom of Portugal
.
Uh, ostensibly founded thekingdom of portugal.
Salazar was saying in 1140 itwas actually more like 1137, but

(01:24:28):
never mind, never, never let agood narrative uh get in the way
of historical facts.
And so he said that the 800thanniversary of the founding of
the kingdom of portugal wasgoing to be happening in 1940,
which happened to be just aroundthe corner.
And so he set out all of thesepeople to rebuild these

(01:24:48):
monuments.
But he gave them this very harddeadline, and for the
Castellanos, sao Joros, it was atwo-year deadline to rebuild
the entire castle before 1940.
And so you can see, if you lookfor it, that it's actually kind
of a botched job, that you lookat it and there are parts of
the castle that don't quite workand don't quite fit, and
there's no, there's a keystonemissing and that's concrete,

(01:25:10):
that's brick and what's going onover there.
And that's because this is allkind of a fascist rebuild
botched job.
And the one thing aboveeverything else that you
absolutely can tell looksperfect is the statue erected in
1940, don Alphonse Henrique,who is lording over Lisbon's

(01:25:34):
skyline as a way of trying toconnect himself to Salazar and
the new fascist regime.

Lara Ayad (01:25:41):
Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating.
I mean I honestly I want to goon a tour like this right now.
I can only imagine how fantasticthat is Well, I think it's so
great that you've started thestories abroad, because it's
such a great way for people whoare actually traveling and
somewhere else to really get anin-depth look at the history of

(01:26:02):
a place, in particular medievalhistory.
That really gives like richstories based on actual facts
and told in a compelling way,and once you have those three
ingredients together, it's justthis beautiful, delicious
cocktail of history publichistory.
I really hope so yeah, yeah,paul, thank you so much for

(01:26:24):
being on the Cheeky Scholar.
I thought this was such afantastic conversation.
I had so much fun with youlearning about the Middle Ages.

My pleasure, absolutely.
Thanks, and feel free to inviteme anytime you want.

Lara Ayad (01:26:35):
Yeah, and just quickly.
How can people follow you onsocial media?
Are you on there?
Is there a good way for peopleto contact you?

Absolutely so.
Our website isstoriesabroadtourscom.
Please do check us out there.
I am on Instagram these daysfor the most part, I have fully
left Twitter, for the obviousreason that people have left
Twitter these days.
But I am medievalistabouttownon Instagram and feel free to

(01:27:03):
check me out there.

Lara Ayad (01:27:04):
Cool, and I'll put some links, too, for your
Instagram account and forstories abroad as well, for
people to check out.
All right, great.
Well, thank you so much, paul,and take care, and we'll talk
again soon.

Absolutely my pleasure.
Thanks so much.

Lara Ayad (01:27:20):
All right Bye.
Absolutely my pleasure.
Thanks so much.
All right Bye.
Want to laugh and grow yourbrain at the same time?
Put that monkey paw to work andhit the subscribe button.
You'll get the newest episodesdelivered right to your favorite
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Thanks for joining us on theCheeky Scholar and until next
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