Medieval Morons: Difference between revisions
→Real Life
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) m (spelling) |
Jason taylor (talk | contribs) |
||
Line 81:
**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 knights.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Hollywood History]]
| |||