This slander is repeated in Pulp Fiction, when Marsellus says to his hillbilly attackers: ‘I’m gonna get medieval on yo’ ass.’ The myth has its roots in the Reformation, when Puritan reformers sought to discredit the 900 years that preceded them as a fog of ignorance. The idea that the Middle Ages was a time of superstition, brutality, short lives, nonstop dysentery and a retreat from rationality has many promoters. Half the population, for one thing, he says, was literate. No one, as Professor Seb Falk points out in this brilliant study of medieval astronomy and learning, ever disbelieved the world was round, and medieval people were far cleverer than they get credit for. It was that brilliant duo who, in 1937, penned the memorable lyric ‘They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round.’ The song has been recorded by at least 15 artists over the years, from Fred Astaire to Lady Gaga, and is embedded in the consciousness of the West.īut its headline message - medieval people are stupid - is total nonsense. We can probably blame George and Ira Gershwin.
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