contrast between medieval and present era
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The word medieval is often treated as synonymous with filth, lawlessness and brutality. In particular the recent actions of ISIS and their treatment of prisoners have been called 'medieval’ by journalists, commentators and bloggers alike. But why do we do this, and is it fair?
The use of medieval in this way has been widely discussed, and is not dissimilar to Orientalism. That is, the creating of an ‘other' to contrast with one's own identity (the modern versus the medieval, or ‘West' versus ‘East’), and, through that contrast, to celebrate our perceived progress or difference in a way that is often also exoticising. As Clare Monagle and Louise D’Arcens have said, ‘When commentators and politicians describe Islamic State as "medieval" they are placing the organisation opportunely outside of modernity, in a sphere of irrationality’. It is an act of distancing, a separation of ‘us’ from ‘them’, that removes them from our current definition of humanity and society, and exculpates us from any kind of association with their actions.
The ‘othering’ of a group or a period is by no means a modern phenomenon: barbarian, regardless of whether or not its origin is a joke at the expense of foreign-language speakers (bar-bar-bar), has been used derogatively in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and English to distance a community from its neighbours and, to the Anglo-Saxons, wealh meant both a foreigner (now ‘Welsh’) and ‘slave’. Conversely, as Roberta Frank has said:
Medieval men of letters, like their modern counterparts, could sometimes be over-eager to recover the colourful rites and leafy folk beliefs of their pagan ancestors.
This phenomenon is encapsulated in the mythical rite of blood-eagling, the ritualistic killing of an enemy by splitting their ribs and spreading them to look like eagles’ wings. The English kings Ælla and Edmund were said to have been victims, among others. The myth has been around since the 12th century when an antiquarian revival in north-western Europe popularised the legend of the vicious Vikings. It was at this point that the berserker myth also took hold. Despite appearing in multiple sources such as Saxo’s Gesta Danorum and sagas of Ragnar Loðbrok, blood-eagling is most probably a misreading of poetic metaphor. Despite a lack of evidence to support it, the myth has persisted from the 12th century until today, in large part because it so perfectly emblemises our perception of that time as violent, lawless and needlessly brutal.