By that, I don't mean your 50s and 60s, which some people (who apparently think we live to 120) call middle-aged. I mean the real European Middle Ages, the era of knights and castles and plagues and the Crusades and bathing once a month and the Inquisition ("What a show!" as sung in "History of the World, Part I," the Mel Brooks movie where I learned most of what I know about history).
We don't love the Middle Ages. We don't hate them, either.
A recent YouGov survey showed that 34% of Americans have very or somewhat favorable views of the Middle Ages and the same percentage have very or somewhat negative views. Americans are split on everything (who should be president, whether the designated hitter is a good idea, whether frying beats flame-broiling and whether the Middle Ages was a good time).
It's remarkable that such a high percentage of people have a favorable view of a period when life expectancy was about 35 years, when less than 20% of people could read and when almost no one had a car or TV. But the other things – chivalry, cool architecture (of famous places, not the homes of those illiterate people who somehow lived to their 40s), the Vikings (they won much more than the modern football team does) – have cache with people.
This is all complicated by the definition of "Middle Ages," although I wouldn't want to live in any version of the times mentioned. The survey-takers asked about the Dark Ages, Late Antiquity and Classical Antiquity. It's really different ways to define the period from about 500 until about 1600 or so. There's nuance on the question of which period includes, for instance, the invention of the printing press. Or when Marco Polo lived. There's an even deeper question of whether it's OK to open your eyes during a game of Marco Polo if you're in water over your head and you're getting nervous about drowning.
But enough about water sports. This is about our view of the Middle Ages. Quit trying to distract me.
Those who took the survey were as divided on the definition of the Middle Ages as they are on the question of Pepsi vs. Coke. A majority considered Columbus' journey to the Americas and Martin Luther writing his Ninety-Five Theses as being post-Middle Ages, while also believing that King Henry VIII annulling his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (which happened after both of the preceding events) was during the Middle Ages.
Maybe they just thought Henry (who was 42 at that time) was in his middle ages. Or maybe, like me, they had no idea about Henry VIII, other than the silly 1965 song by Herman's Hermits, which isn't about the king after all. Most of that ignorance is also likely due to the fact that it wasn't covered in "History of the World Part I," I guess.
We're split on our views of what we think of the Middle Ages, we're split on when they happened, we're split on whether you can open your eyes in Marco Polo to avoid the threat of drowning, but we have some consensus on specifics.
Most of us dislike the Black Plague and the Hundred Years War. Most of us like castles and chivalry.
But looking closer at the numbers brings some further troubling data. For instance, 73% of people have a negative view of the Black Plague, which killed between 30% and 50% of Europeans. But 9% of people have a positive view of it.
What? Who has a positive view of the Black Plague?
Similarly, 16% of people have a positive view of the Inquisition. I hope the Black Plague fans are just an extreme subset of the Inquisition fans ("Here we go!"), rather than a different group. We're in trouble if 25% of people have a favorable view of one of those events.
Ultimately, our view of the Middle Ages is confused. Movies about the era aren't about people starving to death at age 8. They're not about losing two-thirds of the people in your village to the Black Plague, which you attribute to some sinister spirits. They're not about people freaking out because they're afraid they'll drown in a swimming pool because no one told them there was an exception to the "keep your eyes closed" rule when you're "it."
That's my conclusion: We have a mixed view of the European Middle Ages because we don't know much about them. Maybe that's generous -- not judging something we don't know. Maybe it's ignorance -- thinking things used to be great because we only watch movies about people who have it good.
Or maybe it's just because everyone didn't have the privilege of watching "History of the World Part I," where we learned about the Inquisition, stand-up philosophers and "The 15 Commandments."
Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.
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