I just recently finished listening to a lecture series about the year 1215 (which. A lot was going on that year tbqh it was a 24 part series) and it reminded me of this post that I never actually followed up on with my thought I needed to fact check. And thanks to @blueeyesatnight I have my answer! (And based on your response you may actually know some of this stuff 😭)
So… Pero Tovar is from Spain. Right? Right.
Here’s the thing though . If TGW was occurring during that time, he… couldn’t have been.
Because from around the early 700s* to 1492, “Spain” was al-Andalus. A Muslim territory. (Not to mention prior to that the Iberian Peninsula had no country called “Spain.” The Umayyad Caliphate pushed out a Visigothic kingdom when they began their conquest of the peninsula. The last time this area had been any one thing, it was a couple hundred years prior as Roman Hispania. In fact, al-Andalus excluded a sliver of what is today northern Spain, and later in its existence as the Caliphate of Córdoba lacked even MORE of what is today northern Spain. I also don’t know for certain, but I feel like if you asked some rando living on that land if they considered themselves Spanish or a Spaniard, they’d have no idea what you were talking about. Certainly that was the case for, say, what we today consider France and England, so I imagine it would be the same elsewhere. Granted, I also don’t think anyone was necessarily going around like “yeah I’m al-Andalusian” just because things were weird and more complex than that.)
*the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Umayyad Caliphate began in 711 and ended sometime in the 720s.
Now granted, this doesn’t mean everyone in that territory was Muslim. In fact they were pretty chill in that regard (and, indeed, until a ways into the 1200s, so was most of Europe) BUT. Like, a LOT of the people who lived there were Muslim. Being Christian or Jewish would’ve put you in the minority. To be clear, though, this absolutely did not stop normal European royal and noble family things from happening—being under Muslim control didn’t stop how society worked writ large. Unfortunately, covering all of that would make this post miles long (longer than it already is…) and extremely confusing and probably boring to everyone but me and like, 3 other people. Ultimately the point here is that Tovar is from a Muslim-controlled territory, NOT the Spain we think of circa the Renaissance what with the inquisitions and all that.
Certainly, Pero wouldn’t have spoken modern Spanish (I mean, hell, go try reading an English manuscript from this period. A lot has happened to language in the last thousand years, believe it or not)—it would’ve been Arabic (more specifically, the vernacular Andalusi Arabic) and/or Andalusi Romance (actually several dialects of Iberian Romance [vernacular Late Latin & a precursor to what we know today as Romance languages]) and/or Berber and/or (though less likely?) Hebrew. Later it may have been Castilian but that puts us well after our window for the movie and into a period where Christian kingdoms are working to drive out Muslim control.
Alright. So. Some interesting facts and dates to rotate in your brain if we are placing the movie between the years 900 and 1200. Ready?
Overlap with the Viking Age (~793 with the Sack of Lindisfarne to about 1050). Vikings everywhere in Europe. EVERYWHERE. They are very good at what they do.
The concept of a united England under Alfred the Great is hot off the presses as of 871. His grandson, Æthelstan the Glorious, would found the Kingdom of England officially in 927.
Leif Erikson chilled in Canada for a bit in 1001
There was an earthquake in the Jordan Valley that caused a tsunami in Mediterranean that killed 70k people in 1033.
Moveable type printing was invented in China in the 1040s.
The Great Schism, where Pope Leo IX and Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Cerularius excommunicated each other and permanently fractured the church into Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, occurred in 1054.
1066… this stupid little bitch William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded England and became king after the Battle of Hastings. This permanently and irreparably ruins the English language as a result, leaving us with the bullshit we have today. No, I don’t want to talk about it. Yes, I do have very strong feelings about this event.
Hildegard von Bingen is born in 1089. She’s really cool y’all should look into her, she’s one of 38 Doctors of the Church (in short, saints who made major contributions to theology). She is one of four women with the title. She also! Had a lot of strong opinions and did not hide away from sharing them. Imagine having the audacity as a woman (and an abbess, to be fair) in the Middle Ages to send a strongly worded letter to The Fucking Pope. And then doing it multiple times
The First Crusade occurred in 1099.
The University of Oxford (yes, the one that still exists today) is founded in 1117.
The Knights Templar is founded in 1118, mainly to protect Jerusalem and the European pilgrims headed there. They also sort of created a medieval ATM…? Read the second paragraph of the “Bankers” section of this Wikipedia article. Idk they were ahead of their time in some ways. Still not great what with the crusading, but you win some you lose some.
The Anarchy takes place in England from 1135-1154.
In 1137, Eleanor of Aquitaine marries some dude named Louis VII of France. She’s another very interesting medieval woman. She later divorced Louis, taking the duchy of Aquitaine with her… to marry Henry II of England. She then gets wrapped up in just… the messiest family drama you can imagine, it’s nuts.
The Second Crusade! 1147-1149.
Genghis Khan (born named Temüjin) is born in 1162.
Notre Dame de Paris starts construction in 1163. (Consecrated in 1182, not finished until 1345!)
Henry II of England starts claiming ownership over Ireland in 1171. Thankfully, this causes no issues and has no bearing even to the modern day (/sarcasm).
The first records of windmills show up in 1185.
The Third Crusade! 1189-1192.
Here are some things Pero would probably have no concept of because they didn’t exist yet, which is pretty wild.
Starting off with a bang: the concept of marriage as a religious sacrament. This wasn’t a thing until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Prior to that it was really based in economics and political power. While less the case in the lower classes, claims to land and property and things like dowry were still important to consider. Nonetheless you were more likely to marry for love if you were poor.
The Magna Carta. Also 1215. (And wasn’t really regarded as that big of a deal at the time bc it was just a bunch of noblemen mad at the king of England. It was like. Immediately reneged on by the king and the pope and it was . Weird.)
A Bible that wasn’t in Latin.
Any sort of formalized education system, really at all, but certainly outside of the church. This man could NOT read or write. (Did you know some scribes could write but couldn’t read? Like they were copying manuscripts but had no idea what they were writing. Anyway)
A merchant class, or really any way of life that wasn’t subsistence farming or otherwise outside the three estates model. As I understand it, the merchant class sort of sprung up out of the land crisis that occurred later in the Little Optimum.
Like… paper? (Not that it would’ve made a difference, again with the literacy thing.) It was all parchment beforehand, which was made of animal skin. Although, the first record of a paper mill in Europe was in Xàtiva in al-Andalus in 1056, so he may have been more likely to encounter it in Spain than elsewhere.
Finally… some things that super didn’t exist in the medieval period, despite what some people like to claim (particularly people in the 16th century for some reason)
The concept of primae noctis. Because all humans the same, for sure powerful men used their power to commit acts of sexual violence, but this wasn’t a thing.
Chastity belts. They exist now for fun and kinky reasons, but there isn’t any evidence they existed in medieval times.
The iron maiden. No, not the band, the torture device. It was dreamt up later to make the people of the Middle Ages look barbaric and cruel, though the first one we know of existing was built in the early 1800s.
On the note of torture, the pear of anguish. Also not a real thing, more than likely. They do exist now though, but more for, again, fun and kinky reasons.
I may at some point do a little bit of research into the path they had to have traveled in the movie, because pretty much no matter how you slice it they would’ve had to go through some crazy territories and that’s pretty interesting. Even pre-Genghis Khan, the Mongols were up to some stuff. Plus the Byzantine empire. Plus the crusades and the various caliphates and the Persians and actually a lot of stuff was happening in China ????????? Whoever tried to pass off the medieval period as “the dark ages” because nothing happened was fucking OFF THEIR ROCKER.
Also. This isn’t me caring about how accurate the film was. We all saw the same movie, there were magnetic monsters trying to get past the Great Wall of China, then they all turned to stone at the end. I don’t think historical accuracy was really the point. It was a fun fantasy movie and frankly if anyone cared about any sort of accuracy about literally anything they wouldn’t have let Matt Damon do that accent that conveniently vanished by the end of the movie.
NONETHELESS, it’s interesting to think about who this guy would’ve been in the historical context he sorta-kinda-not-really came from. For instance, this guy knows how to fight, and considering the three estates model, that might mean he is from a noble class—peasants didn’t do that, and no one really moved from one estate to another. Granted, mercenaries were a thing (though feel free to ask Vortigern how that worked out with Hengist and Horsa) but again, you gotta think about what’s most likely (and, y’know, what’s most interesting or whatever lmao)
Ok thanks for coming to my ted talk 👍
dailybridgerton
snowghoul
titsay
izzy806
