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Mad Myths in History that Just Won’t Go Away

Khalid Elhassan March 24, 2022 37 min

Children picking cotton in 1913 Texas, falsely claimed to be Irish slaves by peddlers of the Irish slavery myth. Humanities Texas

8. The Untrue Image of the Middle Ages as a Drab Period

The Middle Ages are often depicted as drab. Fifteen Eighty Four

To go by modern depictions of the Middle Ages in movies and on TV, we would have to conclude that the medieval era must have been a pretty drab one. Just about everybody is shown in dull brown clothes, occasionally broken by a bit of black. Buildings are either plain brown wood for the lower classes’ dwellings or unadorned stone grey for the castles of the aristocratic elites or the churches and cathedrals of the usually brown-clad clergy. The image conjured up is untrue to the reality of how the medieval era actually looked.

People in the Middle Ages, far from restricting themselves to shades of brown and black, tried to get as colorful as they could whenever possible. Medieval folk liked to take a paint brush to anything that couldn’t move and tried to pack as many colors into their wardrobe as possible. Those with means would decorate their walls with vibrant tapestries and frescoes, and clothes would have a splash of color by way of a trim, or the entire outfit might be dyed.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.