500 Posts

So this is a milestone.  This marks the 500th post on my blog, "Life in the Middle Ages."

I started the blog back in 2014, over eight years ago, because I knew there was a lot of interest in medieval social history but not necessarily a lot of places to actually learn about it.  Sure, there were little "fun fact" things that might mention something from the Middle Ages, such as, "Medieval kings often received visitors while in the bathtub," complete with a drawing of someone lying in a clawfoot tub, wearing a crown, greeting someone dressed like the Vatican's Swiss guard.  (Ultimate source for this highly unlikely image is a comment by a contemporary biographer of Charlemagne, saying the king invited his courtiers to join him in the hot spring baths of Aachen, which would have been more like a small swimming pool.)  But I wanted to provide a look at how medieval people lived their lives, in an informal but scholarly accurate way.

The blog has been a success.  It routinely gets hundreds of hits a day.  I think some home-school curricula include links to it.  My post on "medieval farm animals" is especially popular, being viewed multiple times a day.  I try to post new material fairly regularly, but there's a whole lot out there already, everything from what medieval marriage was like, to latrines, to war horses, to medieval diet, to the origins of universities, to the history of the Bible, and so much more.  Scroll through, and I'm sure you'll find something interesting.

Along the way I also discuss, at least in passing, some of the things that modern western society takes for granted, like electricity and clean running water (and chocolate), to draw a contrast between our lives and those of our ancestors.  On the other hand, a constant effort has been not to draw too sharp a contrast between us and medieval people.  They really are like us in everything besides the material objects that surround us.  Looking down at people of the past as somehow defective because they didn't have cell phones doesn't help anything.

I also blog intermittently about my own fiction.  I write fantasy, set in a semi-medieval world.  It helps that in knowing a lot of real medieval history I can add texture and detail to the background.  And when I'm anachronistic, I'm doing it on purpose.

So if you've just stumbled across my blog, or if you've been following it for a long time, I hope you continue to find it enjoyable.  And are there topics I've never covered that you'd like to know about?  If so, let me know in the comments section, or email me (link in my profile).

© C. Dale Brittain 2022

For much of the material from the first half dozen years of the blog, organized into handy chapters, see my ebook, Positively Medieval:  Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback, on Amazon and other on-line retailers, or for sale from your local bookstore.