“History isn’t necessarily what happened. It’s often what people want us to think happened.” – Terry Jones
While I’m at work, I like either play music or put movies/tv shows on in the background. Due to my recent obsession with The Tudors, I’ve been watching documentaries about the period, which randomly led me to a BBC series Terry Jones wrote and hosted: Medieval Life. It’s entertaining, funny and questions what we think of as well established “facts” about the time. I had no idea, but Terry Jones is a popular historian, has written books, and made another series about the Barbarians. In The Observer he explains why he felt the need to create such a show.
The main reason I wanted to make Medieval Lives was to get my own back on the Renaissance. It’s not that the Renaissance has ever done me any harm personally, you understand. It’s just that I’m sick of the way people’s eyes light up when they start talking about the Renaissance. I’m sick of the way art critics tend to say: ‘Aaaah! The Renaissance!’ with that deeply self-satisfied air of someone who is at last getting down to the Real Thing.
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The distortions, obfuscations and downright lies which they and admirers of the Renaissance ever since have fastened onto the Middle Ages still infect our historical vision. The very fact that we call that period (whatever it is) ‘the Middle Ages’ is but one example. The idea that it is a limbo between the bright lights of the classical World and the even brighter lights of the Renaissance is enshrined there in the very title.