Medieval Stupidity
Medieval stupidity should be easy to characterize: It should be Christian stupidity. However, a look at the historical record indicates much less Christian behavior than belief during the Middle Ages so stupidity in this era of religious violence was more a function of the Church reacting to medieval realities as a ruling rather than Christian institution. Still, although the Christian schema was not much of a guide to medieval behavior–being more a set of rituals than a code of ethical integrity, it inhibited appreciation of the secular di-mension of life, and it was this inhibition which actually char-acterized medieval stupidity. This condition was more noticeable among the intelligencia, such as it was, which had been indoctrinated with theology, than among the people or the prag-matic rulers of the Church or states. Certainly the political be-havior of medieval leaders was clearly shaped more by some eternal, transcendent power ethic4 than by either a sense of Christian virtue or a inherent desire to understand what they were doing.
