The medieval period, often referred to as the "Dark Ages," was a time of great superstition, limited scientific understanding, and some truly bizarre ideas and inventions. From gruesome torture devices to useless medical procedures, some of these notions will make you shudder – and feel grateful to be alive in modern times! Let‘s explore 10 of the oddest medieval concepts and contraptions.
1. Trial by Ordeal
Think you‘re innocent of a crime? Prove it by plunging your hand into a cauldron of boiling water and hoping your skin doesn‘t blister! Or walk barefoot across red-hot iron and pray your feet emerge unburned. Such was the logic of trial by ordeal, a medieval "justice" system based on the idea that God would miraculously protect the innocent. Needless to say, the ordeal often ended badly for the accused regardless of guilt.
Other ordeals included ingesting poison, being tossed bound into an icy lake (sinking "proved" innocence), and engaging in combat. Mercifully, ordeals were largely abandoned by the 16th century in favor of trials based on evidence. But they serve as a shocking reminder of medieval barbarism and superstition passing as wisdom.
2. Chastity Belts
The idea of a metal undergarment to prevent women from engaging in sexual activity may seem like something out of a bad comedy. But chastity belts were an actual invention that first appeared in medieval times, apparently to ensure female fidelity while men were away at war.
However, there‘s little evidence that chastity belts were widely used in the Middle Ages. Most of the belts that exist today have been dated to the 18th-19th centuries and may have been created as curiosities or anti-masturbation devices during the Victorian era rather than as a common medieval appliance. Still, the concept offers insight into premodern attitudes about women‘s sexuality.
3. Barber Surgeons
Got a toothache? Need a limb sawed off? How about a haircut too while we‘re at it? In medieval times, the local barber was often your one-stop shop for grooming and grisly medical procedures. Formal training for surgeons was limited, so barbers frequently took on the bloody tasks of tooth extraction, wound treatment, and even amputations in addition to cutting hair and trimming beards.
Anesthesia usually consisted of liquor or herbal concoctions, and sanitation was basically nonexistent (you can imagine how that went). The barber‘s pole with its red and white stripes originated as a symbol of their dual trades – the red representing blood and the white signifying bandages. Aren‘t you glad dental and medical specialties are separate professions today?
4. Witch Hunts
Believe it or not, witch trials weren‘t just a Salem phenomenon. Europe was gripped by anti-witch hysteria in the 15th-17th centuries, with an estimated 40,000-50,000 people, mostly women, executed for allegedly practicing witchcraft.
Witch suspicion often targeted elderly, poor, or marginal women – anyone who didn‘t fit societal norms. Accusations were leveled with little evidence and suspects were often brutally tortured into confessing. "Proving" one‘s innocence was next to impossible when superstition ran rampant and due process was nowhere to be found.
Alleged witches were typically hanged or burned at the stake in a public spectacle meant to purge the community of evil and warn others against sinful behavior. Of course, the true evil was the cruel and misogynistic fervor of the witch hunters themselves. The dark history of witch persecution offers a cautionary tale about unchecked fear and fanaticism.
5. Flagellants
Self-punishment was all the rage among some medieval religious sects. Flagellants were radical Christians who would whip themselves bloody with scourges as an extreme act of penance and an attempt to ward off disease and disaster.
The practice became especially popular during times of crisis like the Black Death of the 14th century. Groups of flagellants would travel from town to town, publicly beating themselves and calling on others to purge their sins. However, the church eventually condemned the movement as heretical.
While self-mortification has a long history in Christianity, taking it to such gory extremes strikes most modern observers as mentally and spiritually unhealthy, not to mention unsanitary. Different strokes for medieval folks, I guess?
6. Papal Indulgences
Speaking of sin, the medieval church came up with a creative way to make a buck off people‘s moral anxieties. Papal indulgences were essentially "get out of hell free" cards sold by the Catholic Church to absolve individuals of their sins – or so they claimed.
Here‘s how it worked: By making a monetary contribution to the church, a person could supposedly knock years off their sentence in purgatory and assure a swifter passage to heaven. The bigger the "donation," the more time deducted from the soul‘s cosmic overtime.
In practice, however, indulgences became a way for the church to raise massive funds for expensive building projects and line its own coffers. The tactic reeked of such spiritual snake oil that it helped spark the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century as critics like Martin Luther cried foul.
7. Four Humors Theory
Feeling under the weather? You‘re probably suffering from an imbalance of blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. At least that‘s what the ancient Greek physician Galen would have diagnosed based on his infamous "four humors" theory of health and personality.
According to Galen, all disease resulted from an excess or deficiency of one of these four bodily fluids. Medieval medicine ran with the concept, as did literature and art, which associated the humors with temperaments – sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic.
The goal of treatment was to restore bodily harmony through methods like purging, bloodletting, and dietary changes. Needless to say, the theory didn‘t produce great results for patients and probably worsened or even caused illnesses. But it sure made for some colorful (and thankfully obsolete) medical writing!
8. Trepanation
When it came to medieval brain surgery, the answer to every problem was: Drill, baby, drill! Trepanation, the practice of boring holes in the skull, was used to treat everything from migraines and seizures to mental illness and skull fractures.
The idea was to release evil spirits or excess pressure believed to be causing the patient‘s symptoms. Sometimes the dura mater, the brain‘s tough outer membrane, was also peeled back for good measure. Amazingly, many patients actually survived the grisly procedure, as evidenced by skulls that show signs of healing around trepanned holes.
While trepanation has some very limited applications in modern brain surgery, medieval practitioners were more likely to scramble their patients‘ brains than cure them. Maybe it‘s a good thing they didn‘t know about lobotomies yet!
9. Medicinal Cannibalism
We‘ve established that medieval medicine was far from an exact science. But surely doctors wouldn‘t prescribe eating human body parts, right? Right?
Wrong! Consuming flesh, blood, bones, and even mummies was a disturbingly common practice in early modern medicine. Egyptian mummies were an especially hot commodity, ground up and sold as a powder believed to cure everything from headaches to ulcers.
Other popular treats included human fat, used as a salve for aches and pains; skull, consumed to treat head ailments; and blood, prescribed as a general health tonic. The more wretched the patient, the more potent their parts were believed to be.
Of course, corpse medicine didn‘t do anything except spread disease and give everybody involved a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. You‘ve probably lost your appetite by now, so I‘ll spare you any more gory details!
10. Codpieces
From the department of "How was this ever a thing?": the codpiece. This fashion "accessory" for men originated in the 15th century as a covering for the crotch opening in hose and trousers. But it soon evolved into a padded and exaggerated pouch that proudly accentuated the, ahem, "goods."
Henry VIII of England was apparently a big fan, as his portraits often feature a prominent royal codpiece. But even the lower classes got in on the trend, as the codpiece became a symbol of virility and masculinity.
Some designs even incorporated pockets for storing small items like coins or keys. And you thought your pants were functional!
By the late 16th century, the codpiece finally fell out of fashion – I can only imagine to the relief of everyone who had to look at them. But their legacy lives on as one of the most bizarre and brazen trends in the history of menswear.
So there you have it – 10 of the weirdest and wildest ideas and inventions to come out of the Middle Ages. From the revolting to the ridiculous, these medieval oddities reveal the colorful and often crazy world of our premodern ancestors.
Aren‘t you glad we live in a time of antibiotics, anesthesia, and undies that leave a little to the imagination? Though to be fair, learning history is a lot more fun when you get to chuckle at the absurdities of the past.
But I think it‘s wise that we don‘t judge our forebears too harshly. After all, who knows what future generations will think when they look back on our quarantine sourdough starters and TikTok challenges? The annals of human culture are full of questionable fads and follies that probably made perfect sense at the time – just ask the medieval barber surgeon as he‘s pulling your tooth and giving you a trim!
