Spellbreakers Ep. 166: The Myth of the Middle Ages

Were the Middle Ages really a thousand years of ignorance, brutality, and superstition? Host Matt Trump, a physicist, says no and has the receipts. Drawing on Johan Huizinga's classic "The Autumn of the Middle Ages" and a revelatory 1982 essay by mathematician James Franklin, Matt makes the case that the Middle Ages were actually a period of extraordinary advancement in philosophy, science, architecture, and literature, and that the Renaissance was the gap, not the golden age. Gothic cathedrals, Thomas Aquinas, Nicole Oresme's pre-Galilean mechanics, the myth of prima nocta, chastity belts, flat earth belief, and the Black Death all get their moment. A rich, wide-ranging episode that will make you rethink everything your history class told you.