The traveler must be careful when approaching Exeter, especially if he is on foot, lest, astonished by the cathedral and its spire, still under construction, no less than twenty-five meters high, he ends up putting his feet in the Shitbrook, the stream of shit. There end up the bones and entrails of animals, rotting meat, pieces of crockery, human feces, come on, the mountains of garbage that give it its name. Of course, long before the arrival of the stench warns. The same stench that assails the nose in the alleys and alleys of the suburbs of this populous city, 2,600 inhabitants that place it in 24th place in the ranking of England in 1377. The year in which we find ourselves.
A city that, understood as an organism, “is a true caricature of the human body: stinky, dirty, dominant, warm and indulgent”, as defined by the historian Ian Mortimer (1967) in this entertaining, cultured, funny and brainy film at the same time. Guide to Time Travel to Medieval England (Captain Swing). As in his other three Guides, Mortimer proposes a journey through time and becomes a visitor, in this case to England in the fourteenth century. What does he find? What he would have seen anyone, because he stands there, as if it were a 3D recreation, and tells it. A past conceived “as a reality that is happening”.
“Freshly cooked sheep’s feet! Ox ribs and a wide assortment of pies!” the street vendor shouts to the crowd. If it is a market day, or a fair, our visitor will have to make his way almost with machetes, such is the crowd that agglomerates to buy and sell, the peasants set up their stalls as best they can among the already established stores where You can find leather goods or metal products and hire the services of notaries or apothecaries. Of course, there will be few who can afford it: that of the middle classes will take centuries to arrive and society is divided into three classes: those who fight, those who pray and those who work the land; there the villains, and pay no attention to the name, are in a better situation than the serfs.
But to get here, the visitor will have found himself at the city gates with the exposed heads of criminals, hanging from a stick, blackened and eyeless if the birds have already done their work. Despite this notice, it is possible that they have tried to steal your bag or have witnessed one or more fights. And he will have come across a multitude of cripples, product not only of diseases and not only of wars. “Anything involving copious bloodshed draws crowds,” Mortimer writes in a chapter that makes one thankful for being born centuries later.
Violence is the norm, children are men at the age of seven and can already be executed, the few, the children of the wealthy, who can attend a school, grind them with sticks or whips to lead them on the right path, the shows with animals are of unusual cruelty, the same that is used with criminals: the more serious the crime, the more atrocious the punishment is considered to be: hanging, evisceration and quartering. Knights prefer beheading and some get the privilege of using their sword against themselves.
Within this catalog of delicacies, women are more than harmed. To begin with, it is thought that the uterus is “cold” and must be frequently “warmed up” with the male sperm, come on, that women who do not mate sufficiently have their uterus “suffocated”, in such a way that they are led to believe men who have “the permanent desire to sleep with them as many times as they can”… Single women are recommended to get married, just like widows, and if this was not possible there were ways to alleviate their situation.
In addition, it was believed that if a woman does not have an orgasm, she cannot get pregnant, which does not translate into better care from her husbands, but rather, in case of rape, if she does get pregnant, no one will believe that she has been forced (and although don’t stay, either). According to a 13th-century writing, women are “of a weak nature, tell more lies, and work and move more slowly than men”; also, “they are more envious” and “The malice of the female soul is superior to that of the male.”
Unlike men, women are classified not by the task they perform, but by their status: maidens, wives, nuns, and widows. From her birth to her death they will depend on a man, and her well-being, or the contrary, will depend first on the position of her husband, and second on his disposition. A paradox: husbands could tease each other: the husband because he had the right, the women because no husband would admit to having been beaten by her, her affront to her manhood would be far worse.
Our traveler will possibly spend the night in an inn; the toilet will consist of a barrel with a seat on top; a servant is in charge of emptying them every morning into the septic tank, which may be very close. It’s not that they are dirty, those who can afford it use bathrooms, wooden containers lined with cloth inside, which is not very hygienic either, but no one knew more, and they change their clothes; however, the vast majority only have what they are wearing and have no spare parts to wash them. Of course, in summer they make a pilgrimage to the river to bathe, in winter they wash in parts as they can.
Public bathrooms, served exclusively by women, who are in charge of soaping and rubbing, can have a happy ending without any problem and end up serving more as a relief than as cleaning, with the infections that it entails and that will not help to improve the situation of our traveler, who if he falls ill, will see how his state is attributed to an astral conjunction rather than to bedbugs.
And if he comes across a flock of crows, he will believe that they are assassins of the devil himself, just as he will think of whoever speaks to him in Celtic… Yes, they are a magical, gullible and superstitious age in which anything is possible . But as Ian Mortimer affirms, before looking down on that century and its inhabitants, let us remember that “the greatest discoveries arise from precisely that same faith that ‘everything’ is possible.”
Ian Mortimer Guide to time travel to medieval England. Captain Swing. Translation by Tomás Fernánez Aúz. 472 pages. 25 euros
