Voltaire and Marx Were NOT Medieval Historians

Φιλολoγικά/Philologica: Danièle Cybulskie, Historian of the Middle Ages · Voltaire and Marx Were NOT Medieval Historians · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Welsh Viking on Medieval Peasants — He's Occasionally Inaccurate or Off

There are lots of people who have their interests in destroying the reputation of the Middle Ages. Let's start with politics. By now, religious people who have this shtick mainly, mostly, perhaps except Jews and Muslims, but at least for Christians in Europe, have it via politics. If they have joined religions that encourage it, they have often done so after their school days.

First we have Enlightened Despotism, preached by Voltaire and Kant, realised by Frederick the Great, a man able to murder Germans by iniquitous warfare, because they preferred to be ruled by Maria Theresia (Silesian wars, during one of which the probably last Catholic priest was killed on European soil on orders of a Protestant King — before Revolutions and Sovietism, that is — namely Blessed Andrew Faulhaber, who refused to tell the Confession Secret of a deserter, a man who had left Frederick's robber army without joining Maria Theresias, simply not fighting either way). Frederick did not act like a Protestant fanatic who considered the Mass a blasphemy, he acted like a Silovik, considering the seal of confession and the absolution probably given to a deserter without requiring him to get back to his troops, as sabotage of the state monopoly of violence.

Then we have Marxism of the old Soviet and Social Democrat schools. I mean prior to some 70's Euro-Marxists, who actually did some real history. These latter ones, understandably, had a disgust for Frederick II that surpassed any ill feelings against the Middle Ages. They were consequently defending the Middle Ages, on many accounts (sometimes with obligate distance taking from the Inquisition, though), and in doing so they were joined by Catholics, even very conservative ones. No, I do not talk of 70's Euro-Marxists, I talk of old school Marxists. Text books of Sweden, when Olof Palme (Socialdemocrat Workers' Party, SAP*) was Minister of Ecclesiastic Affairs or of the Soviet Union, and later under Tito**, Ceaucescu, Honegger, Dubček or Husák, Władysław Gomułka, and so on.

Not all Classical liberals would agree, but some, those most promoting Industrial Capitalism were pretending the conditions prior to it were inhuman, and as the conditions under Industrial Capitalism have long been inhuman enough to fan Communist resentments, the inhumanity of the Middle Ages had to be correspondingly exaggerated, which kind of historiography was the source for Marx' own description of "Feudalism" in some*** chapter of Das Kapital. Also, not all Classical liberals would support the French Revolution, nor all French Revolutionaries Classical liberalism. The French Revolutionaries were using the same critique of the Middle Ages as Voltaire had given Frederick, and were consequently basically clamouring for a populist and non-monarchic version of Enlightened Despotism. Non-monarchic not being the most practical system of government in a land the size of France, and especially not in times of turmoil that the Revolution had usshered in (like Silesian Wars, but on a largers scale), the system was then perfected by a certain Napoleon Bonaparte.

A side remark on the latter. I do not know of any real attempt of gematrically linking Napoleon Bonaparte to 666. In War and Peace, Tolstoy° describes a character who had come to hear of a Masonic secret°° code making "l'Empereur Napoléon" into 666. Since English propaganda was out trying to present Napoleon as "the Beast" (something I know from Austrian, but not Swedish school books), if they had had a valid gematria°°° linking his name, with or without title, to 666, they would presumably have published it and it would be known.

Then we have all the religious enemies of Roman Catholicism. A Muslim is likely to say the Caliphate provided bathing and hygiene, but the Christian Medieval Kingdoms sacked that. Dissing baths is actually a phenomenon from late 1400's or early 1500's reaching to the times of George Washington. It didn't mean a lack of hygiene, but it meant a less simple and to some less accessible procedure. A Waldensian would argue the Alpine valleys of Lombardy were clean, but the Medieval cities like Turin and Nice, or at least Milan and Aix, were filthy. A Jew could claim the Jewry of Carpentras or the Ghetto of Rome was clean, while the Christian parts of these cites were filthy. Some of them might rely on Medieval Jewish descriptions, involving mentions of ritual uncleanness, and not make the distinction. And so on.

Each if these religions, and each of the political movements I described, apart from Catholic Conservatives and post-70's Euro-Marxists, would like to pretend serfs were suffering a horribly bad deal. I'll not share the two videos which were giving wildly inaccurate informations on some levels, but I'll share my objections before I dismissed them, also there under the videos.

I 1:36 You have put three dots on Scandinavia, one on Sweden, two on Norway.

It so happens, Sweden and Norway never had serfs. They had thralls fairly long (Sweden abolished thralls in 1351), who technically were slaves, but never had serfs.

I think there is some kind of incompetence in your research.

II "on top of the burden of working his own 2:46 land to feed his family serve had to spend about three days each week working on the land of his Lord"

Let's do some mathematics.

You assume, incorrectly, all of the peasant population were serfs. This is incorrect to start with, but you will not quarrel with the idea 75 % of the general population were serfs, and 95 % were some kind of farmers, including serfs.

You then pretend a serf worked 3 out of 6 work days per week on the land of his lord.

First of all, a serf has to feed himself and his family. Second, the worst possible (way beyond actual, since there were non-serf peasants) is, he also had to feed the remaining 25 %, via his lord, who gained money by selling to city dwellers, something the serf, supposedly, couldn't do.

That would make each serf feed himself and 1/3, his family and 1/3 family. Three serfs with families fed a total of four people with families, on your view.

As the serf mainly fed his family via his own work, how come he has to work half the time to feed others, when it should only be a quarter of the time? Your figures do not really add up.

Perhaps there was some socialism involved. Perhaps the landlord was reserving himself the not just right but also realistic opportunity to feed serfs when they ran out of their own supplies, so as to bind them in gratitude. But realistically, it could not be that the men who (apart from soldiers, fishermen and lumberjacks) did the hardest work were less well fed than everyone else.

That they were less well fed than the soldiers is possible, but would not normally involve starving serfs. They didn't live on Auschwitz conditions. Nor the conditions of Catholic tenants during the potato famine in Ireland. Nor the conditions of early industrial workers in Manchester who didn't need all that strength, since machines were taking over important parts of their tasks.

I call your bluff. Cite your sources!

I am not holding my breath they will do that. If they did, it is too likely it would be a 70's textbook of history, the kind of thing the historians of the last decades have tried to but largely failed to change.

Instead, I will here link to a video which actually does try to make a difference against this background of ignorance. I'm only 11:26 into it, but I already like it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Dominica in albis
7.IV.2024

Here is the video:

How Feudalism never existed: The Tyranny of a Construct | Medieval History Documentary
Viator in Terra | 21 Dec. 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiA7uOqEhKo

* The Swedish abbreviation stands for "Socialdemokratiska Arbetare-Partiet."
** If I have come out as supporting his economic system, in defense of Carlos Hugo, this nowise extends to his school system.
*** No, I don't know which chapter, I am however certain, there was such a part, describing Liberalism or Capitalism as a progress from Feudalism, making things better, when arguably it instead made things worse for the farming majority of the population.
° Whose present day relative is highly scathing on French volunteers in the Ukraine or possibly future regular soldiers ("don't worry, we'll kill them all") ...
°° The Apocalypse belongs to all, and unlike dates for the second coming, pointing out present day very likely candidates of the Antichrist is specifically authorised in that book. Masons have no right to demand secrecy, and the only "code" needed is one linking the letters of the alphabet to number values, and that neither being ad hoc nor secret. Alpha, beta, gamma and aleph, beth, gimel spell 1, 2, 3. (Binary versions of) 65, 66, 67 spell out A, B, C, as 97, 98, 99 do for a, b, c. Each binary number can be respelled as a decimal number. So, Greek, Hebrew and Latin spellings are fair game, and the last of these in ASCII.
°°° Like "Ο Απόλλωνας" gives 1332 or 2*666 in a valid, simple Greek alphanumeric gematria.