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Why Do We Keep Returning To The Middle Ages?
History’s most iconic era
Ask a modern historian what and when the Middle Ages or Medieval period is and you’ll get a variety of answers. Traditionally it has been defined as the period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century and before the Renaissance in the 15th century — an almost 1000-year-long period. Sometimes it starts later, following the Dark Ages. Sometimes it finishes later, skipping the Renassiance and going straight to the Early Modern. As with all these ‘historical periods’ even looking slightly below the surface calls them into question.
What makes Dante a poet of the Middle Ages, while Petrarch, who was fifteen when Dante died, a poet of the Renaissance, sometimes even credited with ‘creating’ it. It’s a complicated subject, one beyond the scope of an article, but our enduring interest in the Middle Ages, whatever that means, has deep roots that still shape our media today, despite some of them being untrue.
The Middle Ages Movies
A quick search of ‘middle ages movies’ will turn up dozens just in the last few decades. The King, Kingdom of Heaven, Ironclad, Braveheart, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the list is immense. While being radically different movies, they all share a few things in common.
