Life in the Middle Ages Depicted in the Book "A World Lit Only by Fire"

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The beginning of the middle ages were tough. Liceracy was openly ignored and only one out of every 100 murderers were brought to justice. Even your average game of football could lead to someone’s burial. Even though some deaths were accidental, most were done intentionally. The punishment for most crimes was death. Even if a person lived a healthy life and didn’t commit any crimes they would only live to the age of 30. Men might make it to forty or even 50 but then would look like men who are 80 years old today. Because these people lived such short lives children married early. A girl could get married without her parents consent at age twelve; a boy however would have to wait until he was fourteen.

During the earlier part of the middle ages the Europeans lives were controlled by the church. With baptisms and funerals part of the church, the people had to go through it from the first few days of their lives to the moments after their death. Because of their deep religion they believed in sorcery, witchcraft, hobgoblins, werewolves, amulets, and black magic. Special precautions were taken when a lady died in a household. The second she stopped breathing all of the servants would run through the house emptying all of the containers of water so her soul wouldn’t drown. Family members would also watch the casket to make sure neither a dog nor cat ran over it, if that happened they believed that the corpse would turn into a vampire.

As the middle ages moved forward the scientists started to question religion. Is there really a god? This question is still asked today and even now the answer is split. The people during the age who were the head of the scientific movement were the humanists. People like Galileo were imprisoned and...

... middle of paper ...

...rture someone long enough you are either going kill them or they will say whatever you want them to; then die. In my opinion I think that if someone commits a crime that’s punishable by death, at least do it humanely. When people are hung, drawn, and quartered its not only cruel but completely unnecessary.

Out of all of these appealing topic that were covered in the book I can defiantly concur that the development in science brought on our own achievements in the same area. If Leonardo Da Vinci hadn’t gone against religion and studied the bodies of the deceased we might not have our MRI or CT scans to show us what is happening inside of our bodies. Without Nicolaus Copernicus’ observations we might still not know that the earth is actually moving. These discoveries are the basis for modern medicine and astronomy, and we wouldn’t be as far as we are without them.

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