![]() ![]() Between poor sanitation, lack of adequate hygiene, and overcrowding, urban dwellers were most at risk from contagions than swept through with the speed of prairie grass fires. The Middle Ages’ Most Stigmatized DiseaseĬontagious diseases were everywhere in the medieval world, but cities were especially vulnerable. High mortality rates, especially in childhood, kept the average life expectancy around 35, give or take a few years.ġ4th-century manuscript illustration of clerics who have been disfigured by leprosy being instructed by a priest. However, as seen below, it was not violence, but diseases, that did the most to keep life expectancy low. Put another way, Europeans were 50 times more murderous back then than they are today. Even discounting deaths in wars or bullying knights rampaging against peasants, the homicide rate was 50 times greater in medieval Europe than in the modern EU. QuoraĪlthough those in the upper social layers were not as screwed as the commoners at the bottom, life was no bed roses for them. Medieval Europeans were 50 times more likely to get murdered by their neighbors than modern Europeans. There was a twist, though: the protection offered was often from fellow members of the upper castes. They were ruthlessly exploited by those in higher layers up the medieval structure, who benefited from the commoners’ labor, in exchange for “protection”. There, society was divided into de facto castes or layers, with the toiling peasants, serfs, and other manual workers – the overwhelming majority of the population – at the bottom. ![]() Especially if you were a commoner in feudal Europe. The medieval era was not a great time to be alive. Following are thirty things about those and other fascinating medieval facts. Or the time convents erupted in frenzies of biting nuns, that drove authorities to distraction. Or the scary sickness known as “Saint Anthony’s Fire”, which killed untold thousands in excruciatingly painful ways. We don’t know exactly just what it was, but it terrorized and devastated people for decades, then vanished, never to be recorded again. Take the mysterious disease known as the “sweating sickness”. The medieval era is full of fascinating but little-known facts. ![]()
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