Epilogue

Summary

TO CLOSE THE volume, we offer some brief thoughts on why it matters. The modern media and modern politicians are often keen to use the Middle Ages. We often encounter claims that we have progressed far beyond “medieval levels of violence,” or that particular actions in the present day are “medieval” in their horror. Sometimes the claim is made specifically with regard to sexual crime. Often the idea is weaponized by politicians and journalists from western Europe or the United States to talk about countries in the Middle East. Sometimes, the trope is used humorously, as in the famous “I’m gonna git medieval on your ass” line from the film Pulp Fiction (1994). But we also often find the claim that such and such a society or politician or government is “medieval” in its levels and means of repression. Surely it cannot be both? We cannot both instrumentalize an image of the Middle Ages as rife with brutal unchecked interpersonal violence, and claim a Middle Ages of hideous torture and brutal repression.

That in itself should be enough to alert us to the fact that these tropes are unwarranted and silly. But they are more than this: they are dangerous. Here are a couple of examples. The claim that rape was ubiquitous in medieval society and that there was no real redress for victim survivors obfuscates our need to do something about the failure of our own societies to undermine rape cultures and provide safety and respect for everyone. Newspaper articles pointing to the victim-blaming attitudes of the Middle Ages divert attention from the victim-blaming which continues to suffuse modern responses. In the wake of Sarah Everard's horrific and tragic murder, authorities in the United Kingdom were still telling women that they should flag down a bus if they feel unsafe, and a judge commenting that Everard's murder was particularly awful because she was entirely innocent. Attitudes to rape and violence against women nowadays often focus on what the women have done or could do differently; they still, implicitly or explicitly, imply gradations of victimhood depending on the behaviour of the victim; they still place an often impossible burden of proof on a woman needing to prove non-consent.