Victorian morality in 1220 France

and in 12th century wales a woman could divorce her busband for having bad breath

How was 1220 france morality wise? Were you there?

Victorians were basically pure evil. They essentially invented racism and made sexism about a hundred times as worse.
Medieval people were just kind of ignorant in most cases and were mostly too concerned with surviving to be cunts.

You do realize that 1220 was after writing was invented, right?

Depends on the region, what section of society you were in, etc.

Ok but how was it

It's far back enough and thinly documented enough to be twisted into a modernist way of thinking by revisionists, whereas written records on every aspect of Victorian society, and most importantly their influence on modern culture survives to this day.
Modern hegemonic ideas descend from Victorian ancestors, but not the medieval French/Catholic ideas, which were repudiated during the so-called Reformation and particularly by the English philosophical tradition.

>They essentially invented racism and made sexism about a hundred times as worse.
Victorians abolished slavery and modern attitudes to sex were already widespread in varying degrees among "bohemian" circles and to varying degrees among the elites at different times. It was also an era in which the independence of women would have been greater than in medieval times, and the last British execution for sodomy occurred in 1835.

I'm fully aware of the fact that "scientific racism" became a thing in Victorian times, but it's a stupid and disingenuous rhetorical trick to retcon history so that racism doesn't exist before scientism came about. Racism was not "invented", it was infused with particular philosophical, anthropological and technological ideas in the "Victorian" cultural framework.

You can just say you don't know.

Except i do know. I spent a year on it at university and did my dissertation on, partially, medieval morals and standards of behaviour (in the context of lay political theory) in medieval france.

Time travel.

This pretty much. People are just generally misinformed about the past. People think that it took circumnavigation to convince people the earth wasn't flat or that priests went around for 1000 years burning scientists at the stake. Most people seem comfortable assuming that feminism is a recent invention, god help you if you point out that people where questioning the validity of the social role of the feminine gender in fiction earlier than fucking Chaucer.
Of course, Veeky Forums does it too. People like to think that chaste female knights are the symptom of some modern plague of anime infected waifu shitters and not something that's been a part of literature forever. Spenser was born in the mid 16th century and he even wrote a "come on guys this has been a thing forever" bit.

In general, people don't really change.
Once you remember that, history makes a lot more sense.
There was never really a dark ages, and the renaissance was more propaganda than reality.

>Forcing historical analogues in a fantasy setting

Wooooow so original it’s not like this is a world where fireballs come out of people’s hands, can’t make anything new or fantastical, right?

>what are historical games
Fag

True.
Actually, something that would have made a better point than my original post would have been to point out that in medieval and later england it was typical to depict the characters of Homer and Virgil as knights in plate, and even to use the word "knight" to describe them. Hell, Virgil was weirdly anachronistic in places in The Aeneid, which would then later be treated the same way in later European literature. Which is pretty much the problem OP is having, which just goes to show its not a recent problem but probably a general societal tendency.

The Aeneid was unfinished and goddamn does it show.
And the weird portrayal of Charlemagne's paladins as devoted christians (maybe, but not to that degree) and clad in gothic plate.
And hell, even Homer if he was real was anachronistic in the Iliad.
For as long as we've been writing about history, we've been getting it horribly, horribly wrong.

And of course, since I can't read latin, I have to rely on translations of Virgil that might further intensify the problem. I remember Dryden's poetic translation (which I actually really enjoy as its own work) referencing steel and mail a few times, but I'm not sure if that particular anachronism is found in the latin version, meaning my understanding of Virgil is also potentially warped by Dryden, making me a modern dullard thinking all kinds of stupid things about what people in the past thought and basically its all a clusterfuck.
So yeah OP, people project on to the past and all kinds of shit gets mixed up.

>Most people seem comfortable assuming that feminism is a recent invention, god help you if you point out that people where questioning the validity of the social role of the feminine gender in fiction earlier than fucking Chaucer.

I broadly agree with you, but it's a mistake to conflate modern feminism with questioning the female role in the past. Modern feminism is very much predicated on modern (i.e. liberal) ideas of egalitarianism and the industrial workplace. You can't pretend that modern ideas fit into a completely different context, one based on feudal hierarchy and agrarian life.

Similar is when people try to claim that homosexuality has always been around. Of course men have buggered each other since the dawn of time, but even the word "homosexuality" is a modern, 20th century invention. The concept of gay marriage would have been inconceivable to most Romans (when Nero did it, the boy was castrated and treated like a woman). Were there people in the past who we would consider homosexual today? Certainly, and many. But their relationships weren't treated as being equivalent to heterosexual ones, which is what we mean when we talk about homosexuality today.

>Why are people doing this?
They're North Americans

True, but its also shows that the narrative that everyone pre-20th century was some kind of raging misogynist and that no one questioned anything about gender roles until dykes in the 60s is bullshit.

>Did not read any of the thread
People have been getting history wrong for as long as there has been history.
The Sumerian King List, one of the oldest historical texts in existence, smoothly transitions from the first kings on the list being god-like men who reigned for thousands of years, to above average humans who reigned for maybe 120 years, to normal men who reigned for 40 before they got pneumonia. People have been fictionalizing and misremembering the past forever, Don Quixote was a parody of the popular romanticisation of knights at the time, and that came out in 1610, basically the authour going "you guys know how silly all this chivalry stuff is right, knights didn't actually do any of that sort of stuff", and that was written in a time many would mistake for still being medieval.
Yes, north Americans do consistently get shit wrong, but no worse than anyone else uneducated, historically.

Well start laying some of that shit on us, Poindexter.

Why are you talking about fantasy setting when I say 1220 France?

Because the French have no morals

Because this is Veeky Forums. A vast majority of people don't, in fact, play their games in actual historical settings. Only mega history nerds do that, and we aren't on Veeky Forums. They use real world analogues often when describing places in their fantasy setting. So most people are assuming that is the case here.

So if you would say write a primer on 1220s morality what would you say? This can be super useful for some players/dms and sounds very interesting

Well prior to the enlightenment there was no emphasis on improving yourself for you, there always had to be a reason. Like learning accounting to do your families books, and if you did only improve for your own sake you were seen as selfish.

Then it's a good thing that you don't get to decide what is Veeky Forums.

recommend me some books my man

I'm just informing you of the general assumption a lot of people are going to make. Since you were bitching about it. You can do what you want, just don't get pissy if people go into it assuming anything talking about a setting is gonna be fucking D&D if it isn't specifically stated otherwise.

Is this about Brettonia? I feel like this is some kind of comment about Brettonia

Finally someone asks the right question!! Great starting points:

- Civilization of the Middle Ages - read this one first!!
- The Oxford History of Medieval Europe
- Medieval Civilization 400-1500

Obviously people varied enormously then and now, but a few generalities:

- much less individualistic than today, the family & community wielded more power than the individual & government
- more religious, more superstitious, more fatalistic
- less literate & numerate, but not substantially dumber
- FAR more rural
- life was cheaper, violence more common
- cities were tiny, ultra-dense, filthy
- nobility did indeed live a Game of Thrones style violent melodrama

>more fatalistic
expand!

That really started with Protestantism

didn't Boethius already take big steps to revitalize the free arts (which literally are defined through self improvement for its own sake)?

Fatalistic both in a “whatever God wants to happen is gonna happen” sense and in a “there’s nothing I can do about it” sense. Today’s ideas of progress, of social ills being addressable with government action or personal initiative, just wasn’t a thing - because at the time they weren’t. If a plague or bad harvest or abusive noble struck your village you were shit out of luck - so be humble, keep your head down, and pray.

Obviously there was the odd exception, the self-made man, the peasant who became a soldier then an earl - but they were RARE and not held up as a model to follow.

This was roughly the time when Saint Louis tried to ban prostitution in Paris, it failed horribly and he reduced his edict to banning prostitution in the "decent streets" of Paris, more or less confining prostitution to areas outside of the city's center. This is also the time when his contemporary St. Thomas Aquinas (both saints, and the two of them actually met at some point when Aquinas was a professor in the University of Paris) wrote that removing prostitution to cleanse a society is like removing the sewers to cleanse a city (maybe in reaction to St. Louis' failure?).

Anyway, the Catholic Church didn't dig prostitution but approached it with a "at least they're not raping, fapping or corrupting decent folk" attitude. Basically a lot more "sex positive" than post-reformation puritans, but they'd still think we're a bunch of fucking degenerates (and rightfully so).

>Fatalistic both in a “whatever God wants to happen is gonna happen” sense and in a “there’s nothing I can do about it” sense.
Well, I don't disagree that they held those views but is fatalistic really the right term to use? When I think of that term, I think of Al-Ghezali's "causality ain't even a thing, it's just God's will" thinking. Not Aquinas sperging out over Aristotelian causality and Greek philosophy in general. Of course he still puts the unmoved mover at the beginning of everything, but he very much saw the world as being dominated by cause and effect. Or are you saying Aquinas was something of a rogue thinker in his time?

Even further, Thomas Aquinus thought human will to be free (in its function as a god-made and thus god-directed being)

Also important to remember:

Marriage (as in our MODERN understanding) is very different from how it's historically been perceived.

Marriage was not just two people going "hey we really like each other let's live together and bone" it was more often than not a political tool used to engineer worthy heirs of royal bloodlines or it was something out of necessity cause children gotta be raised.

The idea that marriage (ideally) is a display of love between wholly consenting partners is a VERY modern convention. So much so most of the shit we associate with Marriages like Best Men or Brides Maids were more like bodyguards or body doubles there to prevent political assassination. If anything a marriage was more like an inauguration ceremony.

Pls no bulli I have the dumbs, but are you saying that this made Aquinas exceptional for his time and generally free will wasn't believed to be a thing? Or are you saying Aquinas was a fatalist after all?

No I'm saying Aquinus (who was less extreme in his free will conception than others) is an even BETTER example for fatalism not being that pronounced as user put it since not only did he believe in cause and effect he also believed in man's ability to choose what to do though not to what end

also I wrote Aquinus both time, i'm an idiot. should just stick with "of Aquin" and spare myself the embarrassment

What, so only rich people got married? The Best Man was a thing for regular people weddings too. Marriage for love and sex is at least as old as Paul’s Epistles.

while it's true that marriage was used as a political tool you're way overplaying the game of thrones retardedness

there is a lot of history and not very many history lessons user, you're being a condescending asshole acting smarter because you learnt a specific period of history

user who claimed the Medieval period was fatalist here. We're just talking at different levels. You're answering "What did theologians think in rarefied abstract treatises?" in which case, yeah, they emphasize free will way more than say the early Protestants. I was trying to describe "What did the average schlub think?"

In any case, neither theologian nor peasant believed in the kind of free will we have: the modern confidence that we have it in our collective power to change the world however we want.

Clearly school is regionally based and the curriculum varies from country to country? How many of you euro cucks can tell me about 19th century canadian politics? How about 17th-20th century north American trade routes? Do you know who Louie riel is?

Who's Louie riel

> Marriage was not just two people going "hey we really like each other let's live together and bone" it was more often than not a political tool used to engineer worthy heirs of royal bloodlines or it was something out of necessity cause children gotta be raised.

You're thinking the nobility. Read Chaucer: ordinary schlubs did marry for all kinds of things including love.

Dutch here, to my knowledge he was this French-Indian hybrid guy who led some kind of rebellian for basically proto-Canadian independence or something? Something among those lines?

But yeah, he's making a valid point.

Tldr started a metis rebellion and was hanged for treason. Do you know who the metis are? I can be a pretentious cunt about my countries history too.

no I don't, who are the metis? An Indian tribe?

Louis Riel was a Metis leader who was instrumental in the founding of the province of Manitoba, and led two armed rebellions against the Canadian government, which led him to be hung for treason.

Aye dutch user, you are correct.

>ordinary schlubs did marry for all kinds of things including love.

Ordinary schlubs also thought sex jokes and physical humor were the highest form of comedy.

Canterbury Tales is a brilliant look into not only the culture of that period, but the way people thought. Even the Squire's tale suggested the middle-class was adorably enamored with the romantic trappings of nobility.

>Do you know who the metis are?
Half-breed.
Applies to canines, sometimes mulattos specifically, or in the case of catholic America, white-native mixed folk.

t.romaniafag

>Canterbury Tales is a brilliant look into not only the culture of that period, but the way people thought
Also, while hilarious insanity was all around(we studied the priest kissing some gal's hooha prank in school), it also showed that, say, the "women want to be treated as equals" thing was a thing gals said even then.

No. There are at least two events in human history, the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, in which people really did change.

I'm skeptical of appeals to an invariant human nature in any case. Those who make them never seem to possess a clear idea of what this invariant human nature is actually composed of. Simply writing a list of features or attributes of human beings which don't appear to have changed is inadequate, as well— for all you know, such a list could be nothing more than a record of which things haven't changed YET.

>it also showed that, say, the "women want to be treated as equals" thing was a thing gals said even then.
Which is why I keep saying that the biggest mistake men ever made was *listening* to women.

There is physical evidence of women complaining about everything since classic greece. Modern man's only fault has been caring about these complaints.

Well, in that story, the dude's reward for reasonably respecting the gal was getting an eternally faithful gorgeous waifu, not post-modern retardism.

>mfw everyone makes fun of Chaucer's tale

explain to me your face

>the dude's reward for reasonably respecting the gal was getting an eternally faithful gorgeous waifu, not post-modern retardism.

This has been a cornerstone of many fairy tales and folklore, too. The lovely damsel all alone on the road should be treated with respect and kindness, if you wish to come out of it alive or even with a new lover. Huldra are a good example of this.

What, you mean the Lysistrata?

>Ignorance: the post

>Heehee, the author's willing to make his self-insert a Storylet.

>tfw of all pages Veeky Forums is teaching me stuff
Keep going on, guys

>the "women want to be treated as equals" thing was a thing gals said even then.

I've got a book on Primary Sources from Medieval times that has a few entries on female authors or the treatment of women - namely, an accusation of rape that spanned for about three pages (some quire forced himself on his knight's wife while the knight was away.) The thing that amazed me was just how "modern" the reactions and sequence of events after the rape were, with the lady staying quiet out of fear of being called a whore, the squire defending the act as consensual, and eventually the matter was settled in a duel overseen by the king where the squire was handily cut down by the enraged husband.

Oh, here's a poem by a Jewish poet (Abraham Ibn Ezra) that might be fun for people here,
>Out of Luck
>However I struggle, I cannot succeed, for my stars have ruined me:
>If I were a dealer in shrouds, no one would die as long as I lived.

>the lady staying quiet out of fear of being called a whore, the squire defending the act as consensual, and eventually the matter was settled in a duel overseen by the king where the squire was handily cut down by the enraged husband.
How is that modern, Napoleon?

It's pretty obvious b8, dude. I don't know why you took it.

That's just Veeky Forums(maybe some generals on /int/, as well)
The rest are retards.

If it wasn't for the underage shitposters we would be an enlightened utopia.

It's modern that a man wants to kill his wife's rapist?

pretty sure the joke is that while the first two parts of the story lull you into a false sense of it all actually going like ti would in modern times, the last part suddenly isn't modern at all.

Oh! On the very page I found that poem, it has Anna Komnene commenting on the "science" of astrology and horoscopes.

She thinks they're bullshit, "We, also, at one time dabbled a little in this science, not in order to cast horoscopes (God Forbid!), but by gaining a more accurate idea of this vain study to be able to pass judgement upon its devotees."

The sticky and QTDDTOT threads of Veeky Forums are pretty informative too.

Most places you have to spray for /pol/, which still runs on a “whoever sprays the same shit over and over again wins” system.

I don't think it is a modern idea to fear making accusations against someone of a higher social standing than you.

/pol/ is educational in that it's a really good look at how politics worked in ancient Rome

evidently it isn't, but meant exactly that: It was interesting of what is done now and what was done back then is similar.

It's also neo-/b/.

Not just /pol/ mate, reality in general. The making of tyrants is the republic refusing to adress a problem. That's the case right now: immigration is simply a forbidden subject, so all dissenters are driven into the hands of literal Nazi nutjobs. And the thing is with how retarded Western governments are acting on that issue, the Nazi's may be the lesser of two evils.

/pol/ is nothing new. In fact it's just the darkest reflection of what's going on in politics in the West. It's where the expressions that are being declared forbidden find their last bastion of expression: in the sewers, between all the filth the internet has to offer. It doesn't get any deeper outside of the deepweb.

immigration is THE political topic, even in America, but also critically discussed everywhere in Europe outside of Scandinavia and Germany, where it's not like it's NOT discussed, just not proportionally to the people's interest.

Which, by the way is extremely overblown anyway

>outside of Scandinavia and Germany
Funnily enough those are also the only countries who have unironic neo-nazi's in government.

Austria too, even though there immigration (and rethoric against it) is dominating all the papers as well as being the stance of the parties in charge.

Exactly
I don't think shit is THAT dire. We've been complaining about political correctness since the 90's, only now there's some genuine push back

The only reason "immigration" is such an issue right now is because of hordes of refugees fleeing the shat bed the world has made of the middle east.

WW1 coming back to roost, again.

Don't be a silly billy. Germany is so nazi-phobic they go into conniptions at the mere sight of jackboots and jhodpurs. Frau Merkel is just a German Margaret Thatcher - and if i'm hearing right, her times just about out.

>but also critically discussed everywhere in Europe outside of Scandinavia and Germany
If by "critically discussed" you mean "every party or individual who brings it up is criticized", yeah. The closest you get to criticism of the mass migration model is "alright, maybe that refugee crisis was handled a bit badly", not "we're demographically and culturally replacing ourselves with third world migrants whose values are at best incompatible with ours". Everyone is equal and Syrian refugees had to walk thousands of kilometers through warzones like Greece, Croatia and Italy to get to safety!

>since the 90's
try the 80's

>Everyone is equal and Syrian refugees had to walk thousands of kilometers through warzones like Greece, Croatia and Italy to get to safety!

Did you know Lebanon has over a million Syrian refugees? Lebanon, a country of only six million people! You want to talk about a demographic shift, look at them!

Hey, I wouldn't inflict Greece on my worst enemy. It's why they are all so poor, being anywhere near Greece just passively sucks your money away.

by "critically discussed" I mean being reviled in the biggest papers, being attacked by the winning parties and railed against in bars and cafes.

Anti-immigration sentiment is not being surpressed, it is popular in the press, politics, daily life pretty much everywhere in Europe.