The Weird Middle Ages: A Collection of Mysterious Stories, Odd Customs, and Strange Superstitions from Medieval Times

Written by Charles River Editors

Narrated by Kelly McGee

In the time period between the fall of Rome and the spread of the Renaissance across the European continent, many of today’s European nations were formed, the Catholic Church rose to great prominence, some of history’s most famous wars occurred, and a social class system was instituted that lasted over 1,000 years. A lot of activity took place during a period frequently labeled derogatively as the “Dark Ages,” and while that period of time is mostly referred to as the “Middle Ages” instead of the Dark Ages today, it has still retained the stigma of being a sort of lost period of time in which Western civilization made no worthwhile progress after the advances of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome.

The Middle Ages have always gripped people’s imaginations, and knights, fair ladies, castles, jousting, and feasts make for a pleasant picture, but the reality was quite different. People were dirty, disease was rife, war was cruel, and life was short. People died in bizarre ways, frequently insisted they saw visions in the sky, and invented marvelous devices seemingly way before their time. British writer L. P. Hartley famously wrote, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Europe in the Middle Ages was more like a different planet.

The Weird Middle Ages: A Collection of Mysterious Stories, Odd Customs, and Strange Superstitions from Medieval Times includes all kinds of tales about people and events during the era.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles River Editors
• Release date: Apr 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781662221491

Reviews for The Weird Middle Ages

[Roland Monsegu · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Fake 'weird' Christian apparitions and miracles b#llshit during middle ages. Brutally written. The audiobook reading voice is terrible. I skipped half way.

[Christian · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A random mix of stories ... (starting from Roman emperor Constantin and his vision to various medieval stories)

[DiannaJohnson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I think this book must be aimed towards a middle school aged audience. Reader sounds like a 12 year old, which considering the educational level of our 7th graders these days, didn't do a bad job. Keep practicing! (I didnt think our schools taught reading anymore.) The content of this book is a decent summary and good place to start medieval studies.

[Tacitus Lector · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Painfully boring, and the author has a lame idea of what "weird" is. It's mostly religious ritual stuff and examples of ignorant people misinterpreting astronomical events for supernatural stuff. Medieval people not understanding a meteor shower hardly constitutes "strange visions". They aren't visions, they SAW A METEOR SHOWER.

[Joanna · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

An extremely poor reader renders this possibly interesting topic tedious. Very poorly trained I’d say.

[Sanne · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The stories weren’t as weird as I expected, but this is still a nice collection of stories that give some insight into medieval European life.

[Karina Tello · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Exceedingly boring and the narrator seems a bit uneducated in narration?
Narrator can’t pronounce words or names very well and did an awful job of recording.

[schlachterfisch · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Not weird at all. The reader makes the boringly written text even worse. I canceled early because I'm just not interested in the details (x attacks city a, b, c..) of warfare of random battles.

[Ryan Gary Edmonds · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Nothing weird about this. Quite mundane historical facts. And then sprinkled with an author dryer than brick dust.

[6y9cx42rwz · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I couldn’t finish it. I listened the first three chapters over and over again because the narrator was so monotonous I couldn’t focus.