Medieval Minims: The hidden meaning of a medieval pen-twister

historytoday.com

19 points·pepys··5 comments

Modern people often portray the Middle Ages as a time of dullness, ignorance, and misery, such as depicted in the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I think this makes us feel better about how superior we are today. The truth is that medieval life was much richer and more beautiful than the stereotype implies.

Yes, even the GoT fandom of recent years, seems to lead to enforcing the same boring view of the middle ages.

I read the entire thing thinking the title ended with the word "pen-tester", and was increasingly more confused what any of this had to do with security.

But it was interesting, nonetheless. I like these sorts of articles on history that ultimately show how people of even the far removed past are more like us than they were different. I have several, similar notebooks myself. Just random thoughts and jottings. I sometimes wonder if some future archeologist will eventually find them in the bottom of landfill and try to figure out what any of it, like, means, man.

I have had a number of similar notebooks over the years. Every one of them has been lost to the washing machine, so the future is saved from my random collection of notes and missives. Though I've stopped wearing cargo pants so it's less likely they'll be missed in a pocket search in the future, maybe something will survive.

I was hoping for a link to the full text.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com