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{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|''Your average peasant had the IQ of an extremely rotten tree stump and the common sense of a very small lump of mud....''
|'''Top Ten Horror Stories'''}}
Medieval people are morons.
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{{examples}}
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure]]''. No matter where they went in history, no matter which historical figure they abducted, nobody really seemed to care that they'd fallen out of the sky in a phone booth and absconded with [[Ludwig Van Beethoven|Beethoven]]. That is of course until they ended up in medieval England, where they were {{spoiler|put on the chopping block to the sound of a man screaming that they came from the sky, and just barely escaped with their skins.}} Also subverted in the fact that neither Bill nor Ted are the sharpest knives in the drawer...
{{quote|'''King''': Put them in the iron maiden.
'''Bill and Ted''': [[Iron Maiden]]? [[The Not-So-Harmless Punishment|Excellent! *Air guitar*]]
'''King''': Execute them!
'''Bill and Ted''': Bogus. }}
* ''[[Monty Python and
{{quote|'''Dennis (peasant):''' We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week, but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special bi-weekly meeting by a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs, but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more major...}}
** According to the [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]] article, anarcho-syndicalist communes [[Truth in Television|did actually exist]].
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** in the original, the temporally shifted heroes utterly destroy a van, thinking it to be a devil-powered cart driven by a Saracen.
*** They do that to a VW Beetle in the remake.
* Subverted in ''[[The Navigator]]''. While the time-displaced villagers are understandably disoriented and frightened by much of what they
* Played straight ''[[The Name of the Rose|In The Name Of The Rose]]'', the film version. Everyone but [[The Watson|the narrator]] and the hero [[Detective Story|William of Baskerville]] is a moron or a fanatic or both.
* Averted in ''[[Luther (2003 film)|Luther]]'' (the biopic of Martin Luther that is). Medieval -- well, Renaissance -- people are shown as having an obviously advanced civilization with impressive infrastructure like cathedrals, palaces, and printing presses, as well as amiable customs (like nailing opinions up at a public place), not to mention jurisprudence and theology based on arguments going back centuries and recorded in gobs and gobs of books which impeccably trained scholars have to wrestle with. There are also clever politicians who know how to do their job. Some, particularly the lower classes, are gullible and easily manipulated, but it is no different from later times in that respect. The only thing really to get past is the idea of a society based on religion and the force used to repress dissent, and religious people at least can sympathize with the former if not the later even if they don't agree.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Averted in [[Michael Crichton]]'s ''Timeline''. In this book, the time travelers are often outwitted and outmatched by the natives. A consistent theme is that while the time travelers possess modern knowledge, they do not have the skills to survive in the more primitive environment.
** Of particular note is that Crichton specifically details the natives' sanitation practices. Lack of awareness of bacteria did not prevent them from attending to hygiene, averting the stereotype of "living in filth".
* ''[[A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court]]'' is a major offender. Of course, [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny|it was new]] when [[Mark Twain]] did it (making this [[Older Than Radio]]), and he was trying to portray the [[Aristocrats Are Evil|evils of aristocracy]]. Still, it's exaggerated and unhistorical, with most of the characters just generally acting [[Too Dumb to Live]]. He was also satirizing the excessively poetic and romantic portrayals of Arthurian legend that were popular at the
* Subverted in the [[Poul Anderson]] novel ''[[The High Crusade]]''. [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|A high tech alien empire]] is brought to its knees [[Rock Beats Laser|by a 14th century English army]]. The Medieval characters naturally view things through a Medieval lens (the aliens are initially mistaken for demons), but are very capable and clever. In fact {{spoiler|not only do the Crusaders end up conquering the aliens, they convert them to both feudalism and Christianity}} by the end. Unfortunately, the movie played this trope nearly completely straight.
** Poul Anderson further subverted this trope in his short story "The Man Who Came Early", in which the titular man [[Trapped in the Past]] fails to impress medieval Icelanders. They aren't even particularly fazed by his handgun.
* Subverted in the book ''1632'', in which the doctor of a time-displaced modern American town has to consult with his "downtime" counterpart. It becomes clear that the "local" doctor not only ''doesn't'' use leeches and ground bat's wing, but has a medical library in nearly a dozen languages (English being one of them) ([[Omniglot|all of which he speaks fluently]], against the US doctor's... just English). The high school history teacher who is also present breaks down laughing and says "[[You Suck|you didn't actually think]] you were ''smarter'' than him, did you?"
** In addition, although they have their initial fears, the <s>medieval</s> early modern characters are extremely quick to recognize and appreciate American technology instead of writing it off as witchcraft and even logically deduce why it cannot be magic.
*** Of course not. It is transdimensional [[Eldritch Abomination
*** Truthfully, the leads in the story (even by Eric Flint's "Middle man" policy) are simply incredibly smart/intuitive, even by modern standards to the point it can come quite [[Subverted Trope|unbelievable]] and tend to adapt with incredible speed to change. This can be [[Justified]] that they had come from living in a [[War Is Hell|literal Hell]] and explained by Gretchen Richter as "There are ''worse'' things than going insane."
* Averted in George Martin's ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''. We don't see that many peasants, but those we do are just people. Some are smart, some are stupid, most are fairly level-headed. In ''The Sworn Sword'', Dunk even tells Egg (who is royalty) to be respectful to them. They might not be able to read or argue about the politics of the realm, but they know when to plant their crops and how to deliver a calf.
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* ''[[Time Squad]]''. In one particular episode, they manage to quickly convince Copernicus to stop being a farmer and write about how the Earth moves around the sun, he promptly agrees and goes to research under the basis that "That sounds important!" only to be seen in the end of the episode running back to where the Squad had just gone, screaming, "Wait! I forgot to ask! WHAT IS THIS 'SUN'?!"
** The "what is this 'sun'?" line likely was more poking fun at the area they showed him to be farming in, looking grey, bleak, and a few bits of brimstone away from Mordor. Probably closer to [[The Dung Ages]], though the first line would still be this trope.
* Parodied in ''[[Futurama]]''. characters from [[The Future]] commonly refer to the 20th century as "The Stupid Ages."
** Leela even tells Fry that being a drop-out of a 20th-century college means nothing in their time, so Fry ends up enrolling in a college in order to drop-out properly.
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* It's also been shown that the average intelligence level is rising, so a few hundred years back the average intelligence level was lower, though perhaps not to the extent seen in fiction. Also, this wasn't a blanket increase; it seems to be [[wikipedia:Flynn effect#The rise in IQ|concentrated]] in those with the lowest IQs, "and negligible in the top half." There seems to be no effect on those with very high IQs. And this is not an increase across the board with the tests: it is [[wikipedia:Flynn effect#The Flynn effect and intelligence models|limited to certain subtests]]. In fact, the average scores in some subtests have decreased slightly (though overshadowed by large increases in the scores of other subtests).
* Leadership and occupation in medieval societies were much more dependent on random factors, like what family they were born into. In today's industrialized countries, people are generally are able to seek qualifications and apply for jobs they are talented in and that follow their interests. Therefore, in the everyday working world, the people you run in skilled positions are more likely to be competent and skilled.
* As might be expected real life was a zig-zag. Early Medieval Europeans had a rich cultural tradition and could be remarkably innovative. At the same time they were not quite plugged in to the general information processing system of the great empires and city-states between the Mediterranean and China. The breakdown of political order led to something like a [[Mad Max]] type situation in which the different tribes and principalities were scattered about aimlessly and in which there was often a positive disincentive toward improvement. For instance a Roman emperor wants his roads kept in good order because it will let him send troops to a crises point; a baron has to little territory to gain such advantage and might simply be giving invaders a quicker route. At the same time there were a number of remarkable monarchs that were geniuses by any standard, the Catholic Church provided an administration to replace the Roman Empire. An intelligent and aggressive middle class was forming. And contact with the East would soon reopen as early as the 1000 AD. Furthermore, even in the lowest times, Medieval rulers always at least knew they had a lot of work to do building civilization up.
** Medieval peasants would certainly have looked like idiots to many of us because they were, kind of, [[Fridge Logic|not urban.]] And certainly not twenty-first-century city dwellers. On the other hand they knew plenty of things most people are not called upon for today, such as predicting weather, keeping vermin off their crops, getting a harvest without agricultural machinery, etc. Not to mention how to cache goods when a passing army or just a rent collector is too near. They did not have what we would call quality education or even what a Medieval Scholar would call such (which by the way, wasn't to bad though sometimes a little impractical). They did know how to survive in their environment, at least [[HAD to Be Sharp|the ones that did so.]]
**Likewise Medieval Nobles were good at [[Game of Thrones]] style [[The Chessmaster|chessmastery.]] Knights were pretty good at single combat though their tactical skill in large battles was mildly off. Strategy was actually better than tactics because communications and organization were often poor whereas getting a handle on where to march, when, and why was a complex matter but fundamentally based on understanding geography and politics better than the other guy and a rather simple army could be used in sophisticated ways. Merchants knew how to predict prices somewhere where they [[You Should Know This Already|did not have real time intelligence]], how to move goods hither and yon. And how to think of elaborate schemes of organization and corporate law. Craftsfolk would have known how to turn out products by hand tools without availing themselves of standardized mass production (though even the precursors to that were known in places like the Venetian navy yard).
* One [[Subversion]] you have to watch for is that sometimes examples of "Medieval Moronry" are just them having a different goal than you are thinking. An example is maps which are inaccurate. Obviously there were inaccurate guides for travel. But some of the maps you see are works of art and not meant to be used for navigation. Likewise bestiaries are not biological textbooks and so when they give folklore about this species or that you cannot tell whether they believed it because the most important part was that they did not really care; they were more interested in an entertaining or didactic yarn.
* One curious and fascinating Zig-zag that was known to be moronic at the time was [[Trial by Combat]]. It is less so in the case of torts (which are about disagreements and therefore can theoretically be settled by wager) than felonies (which are about an actual crime). Be that as it may, appealing to [[Might Makes Right]] was always known as moronic and the Church condemned the practice as "tempting God" (arrogantly doing experiments with God without His permission). In fact even when it was done it was usually done because investigation procedures were primitive and fighting it out was thought a way of just getting the matter over with. Furthermore [[Trial by Combat]] remained on the books of many countries long after it was taken seriously much as some towns in America still have laws about where to tie up one's horse. Once in a while there would be a surprise as when a duel was fought between two French knights during the Hundred Years War over a perplexing accusation of rape of one of said knight's wife.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Hollywood History]]
[[Category:Medieval Morons]]
[[Category:Alliterative Trope Titles]]
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