Ask HN: Did people in the middle ages re-enact ancient times? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Did people in the middle ages re-enact ancient times?

7 pointskrishadi13 comments

I just went to a festival in Northern Italy, which was set to mimic the middles ages. The food, cutlery (or, the lack of it), entertainment, were all set to match the times. I've been to many events/restaurants around Europe that are set to re enact the middle ages.

Is this a new phenomenon of re enacting a different period in time? Or, did people in the middle ages re enact the ancient times?

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I imagine they do most of the things we do today. They play games of chance. They have feasts.

There's a lot of stuff that's attributed to "ritual" and "religion", but I believe a lot of that is simply entertainment. Aristotle wrote in Poetics of Greek epics being unnecessary spectacle, which makes The Odyssey sound like The Avengers of the era. 3000 years from now, people will talk of Batman worship. The animal headed deities of the ancient era could just be a furry thing.

Also take note that Ancient Greece and Egypt lasted for a very long time. By Cleopatra's time, the Pyramid of Giza had been around for over 2000 years. It could well be that they did reenactments back then too.

It is very likely that plays were performed by traveling minstrels who had knowledge based on Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, as those stories would've been known and passed down, such as portraying Alexander the Great, Odyssey, and the Trojan Wars.

This seems to be a method of knowledge transfer from generation to generation.

Did they also re-live the experience?

Oral tradition was past down from generation to generation, but then entertainers/performers would spread that knowledge. Children likely enjoyed those shows. They must've been as creative as a few props to bring about the imagination.

You left out the Spanish Inquisition, and all the other oppression of free thought and speech that characterized the dark ages.

Anything that hinted of the church and Jesus not being the ultimate source of truth was brutally suppressed.

Why would anyone act out what those heathen did? It would be seen as sinful and risking damnation and excommunication.

I don't know if they did, but back then, people revered anything ancient

They believed that the older something was, the more "truthful" it must be. E.g., Hellenes mistakenly regarded Jews as a people with the most ancient books and religion[2], and therefore, as being true

I think it's somewhat similar to how Earthlings might react if we were to encounter an older alien civilization

This somewhat resembles the Lindy Effect on an intuitive level

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

[2] back then they didn't knew about Sumerians and Akkadians

This would be an ideal question for/r/askhistorians … the sub is heavily moderated and answers are well sourced.

Just did that, here is the link in case you'd be interested: https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/Hv5iLockPn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_Play

Literally, this was the Renaissance.

Do you mean to say that this phenomenon was what made renaissance?

In very reductionist terms, yes.

Limited to revival of classic Greek and Roman knowledge of-course. Not ancient Egypt, Hebrew, Mesopotamian, Chinese or Persian. I guess it could be the location, a European rebirth would mimic its own elden empires, not those of others.

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