No Trivial Matter

Accuracy in Medieval Trivia

by Melissa Snell

Who can resist historical trivia? Those tasty little tidbits about life in the "olden days" are just too delicious to pass up. But when it comes to medieval trivia, beware. Many of the stray "interesting facts" you'll encounter about the Middle Ages cannot be considered at all accurate.

Medieval studies, much like ancient history, is fraught with common misconceptions. When dealing with a historical period about which more is unknown than known, it's easy for an unsubstantiated theory to work its way into the lore of our past and become entrenched in popular culture. Disproving some of these so-called "facts" can be exceedingly difficult -- even impossible; and while the theories themselves cannot be substantiated, they die hard.

Erroneous trivia comes in all flavors. Sometimes, it's a generalization or imprecise factoid that can lead people to make assumptions about the entire Middle Ages. For example:

In medieval times, silver was once considered more precious than gold because of its scarcity.¹

Anyone reading this might think that silver was scarce throughout medieval Europe. Yet, while the Byzantine gold standard influenced other coinage systems in Europe for centuries, standards for various economies in Europe varied from region to region and from era to era. Silver was generally considered inferior to gold, and silver coins were almost always less valuable than gold coins of the same size or smaller.

In the eighth century, thanks in part to a gold shortage, Charlemagne's father Pepin replaced gold with silver in the Carolingian economy when he introduced the denier coin. The silver-based system, later reorganized by Charlemagne, would serve as the basis for most medieval coinage in northern Europe.

There were definitely gold shortages in parts of Europe at various times, and there may once have been a silver shortage that lasted long enough for silver to be considered rare, and therefore more valuable than gold. But if so, this little tidbit of info does nothing to shed light on where or when the shortage took place.

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Note

1 This trivia bit was found through a search of the FunTrivia.com website. [back]

 

 

 

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