About this episode
Traditionally, the Middle Ages (which is easier to spell) is the time from the 5th century to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. We could also pull it a little later into the birth of the Renaissance, and we might as well bookend this with the Mona Lisa.
The space between the Nika Riots and the Mona Lisa is about 1000 years, and a lot happened.
🏛 Early Medieval (c. 500–1000 CE)
532 - The Nika Riots: In Constantinople, under Emperor Justinian, what starts as a sports riot turns into a full-blown class riot with many people being hacked to death in the hippodrome. It’s a bloody start to this brutal time period.
890 - Olga of Kiev Born: The future Saint Olga doesn’t suffer fools—or murderers. She’ll go on to take spectacular revenge for her husband's death with fire, pit traps, and a touch of mass slaughter.
🏰 High Medieval (c. 1000–1300 CE)
1066 - Battle of Hastings: William the Bastard becomes William the Conqueror by crushing the Anglo-Saxons. Spoiler: there’s a lot of eye-stabbing and arrow-to-the-face action.
1078 - Construction begins on The Tower of London (by William the Conqueror): Built by William to intimidate Londoners, the Tower goes on to be a prison, zoo, and execution site. It’s the most iconic “doomed to fail” Airbnb of all time.
Let’s pop in to talk about executions here! The racks, the spikes, the dungeons - imagine Robin Hood Prince of Thieves + The Princess Bride.
🕯 Late Medieval (c. 1300–1500 CE)
1343 - Geoffrey Chaucer Born: The father of English literature will write The Canterbury Tales, packed with horny nuns, fart jokes, and death. Middle English never sounded so messy.
1380 - Poggio Bracciolini Born: This book-hunting humanist saves ancient texts from oblivion—right before Europe burns them again. A hero of the Renaissance, with a side of spicy gossip.
1381 - Peasants’ Revolt: Fed up with taxes and plague-era inequality, English peasants rise up and nearly overthrow the king. It ends, of course, with heads on pikes.
1393 - A fiery mistake at the Ball: When the king of France and his friends dress up as “wild men” with flammable costumes, one torch turns the party into a deadly inferno.
1410 - First Battle of Jan Žižka: Blind in one eye and armed with war wagons, Žižka kicks off a string of battles that make him one of the only undefeated generals in history.
1496 - The Guanches Defeated: The last resistance of the Indigenous Guanches of the Canary Islands is crushed by the Spanish, marking an early and bloody step in European imperialism.
🌅 Medieval-to-Renaissance Cusp (c. 1500–1517)
1503 - Nostradamus Born: He’s born during plagues and portents—and grows up to write cryptic rhymes that somehow predict everything from Hitler to TikTok (allegedly).
1503 - Mona Lisa Started: Leonardo da Vinci begins painting a mysterious woman with an even more mysterious smile. Centuries later, we still can’t stop staring.
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