Transcript
[00:00] It’s probably not news to anybody that [00:01] fighting in incredibly brutal [00:03] hand-to-hand combat for hours at a time, [00:05] crushing guys heads with maces, seeing [00:07] your homies get impaled or beheaded, and [00:10] then just kind of sitting there to deal [00:11] with it in the aftermath probably had [00:13] some seriously damaging long-term [00:14] psychological effects. But it might [00:16] actually be worse than we could even [00:18] imagine, especially because the medieval [00:21] mind was, of course, anatomically the [00:23] same as ours, but spiritually was way [00:25] different. PTSD as a clinical diagnosis [00:27] didn’t exist until 1980 and it was [00:29] essentially invented to describe what [00:31] was happening to Vietnam veterans. To [00:33] sum it up super simply, PTSD is a fear [00:36] disorder with flashbacks and [00:38] hypervigilance. It’s basically like your [00:40] central nervous system is stuck in the [00:42] on position at all times. When you look [00:44] through the medieval sources, you don’t [00:45] always find that kind of thing. And I [00:47] think applying modern terms to the [00:49] medieval past can sometimes be a [00:51] stretch, which is a hilariously ironic [00:53] thing for me to say, but anyway, what we [00:56] can find in the medieval sources is [00:58] something even deeper. There was an 11th [01:00] century French warrior named Rogo, who [01:02] had gotten pretty seriously injured in a [01:04] battle. He somehow survived, but his [01:05] right arm was totally paralyzed, and [01:07] there wasn’t really a lot that medieval [01:09] doctors could do for that kind of thing. [01:10] Rigo ended up falling into a deep [01:12] depression when he got home and [01:14] according to a contemporary chronicle, [01:16] he wanted to die rather than drag out a [01:18] disgusting and useless life with his [01:20] body in such a shameful state. The [01:22] injury obviously had forced him to give [01:24] up his life as a soldier. But in [01:26] medieval society, that was his role. He [01:28] was one of those who fought and now he [01:30] was nothing. If you keep on reading the [01:32] chronicle, Rio just keeps going deeper [01:35] and deeper into this downward spiral and [01:37] even stops doing the things that used to [01:39] make him happy, like riding horses. For [01:41] a red-blooded, testosterone-filled [01:43] medieval man to not want to zoom around [01:45] on a steed, something had to be [01:47] seriously wrong. We can look at another [01:49] example from the 11th century, which is [01:51] recorded in a Viking saga called the [01:52] Gretus. There was a Viking warrior named [01:54] Onand, and he lost his lower leg in a [01:56] brutal battle in the late 9th century. [01:58] Maybe you can already see where this is [01:59] going. When he gets home, he’s fitted [02:01] with a wooden prosthetic leg. And in [02:03] typical medieval fashion, everybody [02:05] starts calling him Onand Treeleg, which [02:07] in terms of medieval nicknames is [02:09] actually much better than Noter the [02:11] Stammer or Louis the Fat. Eventually, [02:13] his leg healed up as much as it could, [02:15] and he could walk around with the [02:16] prosthetic, but mentally he was never [02:18] the same. Someone asked him why he was [02:21] so down all the time, and Onand replied, [02:23] “In eyes of fighting man and fame, my [02:26] strength and manhood are but vain. This [02:28] is the thing that makes me a joyless [02:30] man. If you’ve ever seen PTSD portrayed [02:32] in movies or TV shows, it’s always [02:34] something like a veteran coming back [02:36] from war and he takes his family out to [02:38] the fair or something and then like a [02:40] car backfires in the parking lot and all [02:41] of a sudden he’s back in Fallujah again. [02:43] But that’s not what we’re seeing here. [02:45] These medieval men have their identities [02:47] completely tied up, not only in their [02:49] combat abilities, but also in their [02:51] ability to physically contribute to the [02:53] community. Once that’s gone, it’s like [02:55] they’re just a burden and they become [02:56] these ghosts. Now, all of this isn’t to [02:59] say that PTSD didn’t exist in the Middle [03:01] Ages. And if you’ve ever clicked an [03:02] article or watched a YouTube video about [03:04] medieval PTSD, they’re probably talking [03:07] about cases like Sir Peter Bayern, who [03:09] the French chronicler Jean Fosar [03:11] mentions in his retelling of the Hundred [03:13] Years War. Peter doesn’t have any [03:14] physical injuries from all the combat [03:16] experiences he’s lived through, but from [03:18] what Fossar tells us, Peter is clearly [03:21] pretty mentally damaged. When he gets [03:23] home from the war, his marriage breaks [03:25] down. His wife leaves him and of course [03:27] takes the kids. He starts having these [03:29] lucid nightmares and he develops this [03:31] fear of sleeping alone. Fosar [03:33] specifically notes, “Sir Peter has a [03:35] habit when he is asleep at night of [03:37] getting up and arming himself. He draws [03:39] his sword in fights, but he does not [03:41] know with whom.” So, we’ve got guys like [03:43] Peter who don’t have any physical [03:45] injuries, but they’re mentally scarred. [03:47] Then we’ve got guys like Onan Treeleg [03:49] whose physical injuries are also causing [03:51] some kind of emotional injury that [03:53] forces them into this downward spiral. [03:55] There was an understanding in medieval [03:57] medical theory that traumatic injuries [03:59] could lead to long-term depression. And [04:01] an English frier aptly named Bartalus [04:04] Anglicus actually wrote a lot about [04:07] depression and had a shockingly modern [04:09] understanding of it. He wasn’t examining [04:11] mental health for soldiers specifically, [04:13] but when he talks about treatment [04:15] options, he recommends having the person [04:17] taken out of their stressful [04:18] environment, giving them comfort and [04:20] encouragement and music therapy along [04:23] with these small, easy tasks to keep the [04:26] mind occupied while they get back on [04:27] their feet. I know I’m beating a dead [04:29] horse in my videos at this point, but [04:31] the popular conception of the Middle [04:33] Ages is that it was a thousand years of [04:35] savage darkness and backwardness. But [04:37] here is a 13th century frier [04:39] recommending essentially the same [04:41] treatment that a modern psychiatrist [04:42] would. I think this is because medieval [04:45] physicians understood that they were [04:47] actually treating something that we’ve [04:48] only recently come to rediscover in the [04:51] 21st century, which is the concept of [04:53] moral injury. PTSD is tied to fear and [04:56] an overactive nervous system, but moral [04:58] injury is usually more associated with [05:00] guilt, shame, regret, betrayal, a loss [05:03] of meaning or identity. So, someone with [05:05] PTSD might constantly be thinking, “I’m [05:07] not safe.” But a person with a moral [05:09] injury might be thinking, “I’m not a [05:11] good person,” or “The world isn’t the [05:13] way I thought it was.” Also, if you’ve [05:15] ever watched any of my videos, you know [05:17] that medieval people had a very specific [05:19] conception of how the world worked and [05:21] what their individual place was in it. [05:23] And it was a much more concrete [05:25] conception than what we have now. So, [05:27] that’s really important to understand [05:28] and remember. If this conception got [05:30] shattered, the consequences could be [05:32] totally disastrous. The term moral [05:34] injury was actually coined by the [05:36] psychiatrist Jonathan Shea in his book [05:38] Achilles in Vietnam, which I highly [05:40] highly recommend if the topic of this [05:42] video interests you. Although it focuses [05:44] more on mental trauma in the classical [05:46] world, it’s still very relevant. Sheay [05:48] says that veterans can usually recover [05:50] from horror, fear, and grief once they [05:52] get home and they start reintegrating [05:54] into civilian life, provided that what [05:56] they think of as right hasn’t also been [05:59] violated. So basically, you can survive [06:01] the terrors of war, but what leaves the [06:04] real lasting damage is when you survive [06:06] doing something or watching something be [06:08] done that violates everything you [06:10] believe about how the world is supposed [06:11] to work. So just think about a knight [06:13] going on crusade who exists in this [06:15] moral framework of the church and the [06:17] code of chivalry and the feudal bond and [06:20] the whole concept that this war he’s [06:22] fighting in has been blessed by God. I [06:23] have to stress that these guys were [06:25] really fighting for something they [06:26] believed in. And I have to stress again [06:28] that everything was so specific in the [06:30] medieval mind. The system they lived in [06:32] told them exactly what they were [06:34] fighting for, what the rules were, what [06:36] it meant to violate those rules, etc., [06:38] etc. So when that whole system broke [06:40] down, my question is, does that knight’s [06:42] whole idea of reality break down with [06:44] it? Well, thank the good lord above, we [06:47] have a perfect contemporary chronicler [06:49] to answer this exact question, and his [06:50] name was Jean Dean Vio. Jean wasn’t a [06:53] career soldier. He was a regional lord [06:55] and really more of an administrator than [06:57] a fighter, which I actually think makes [06:59] his account even more interesting to us. [07:01] In 1244, the French king Louis the 9th, [07:03] who would later become St. Louis, [07:05] started organizing the seventh crusade. [07:07] At this point, the crusades still loomed [07:09] really large in the European [07:10] imagination, even though the returns had [07:12] been diminishing for quite a while. And [07:14] Jean joined up partly out of a sense of [07:16] feudal duty and also because his father [07:18] had gone on crusade 35 years before [07:20] against the Albagenzians. Long story [07:22] short, the Seventh Crusade was a [07:24] complete disaster in pretty much every [07:26] sense of the word. The basic strategy [07:27] was to cross the Mediterranean, invade [07:30] Egypt, and then take the army and march [07:32] up into the Holy Land from the south. It [07:35] didn’t work out that way at all. The [07:36] army pretty much immediately got cut off [07:38] from its supply lines. Tons of soldiers [07:41] died from dysentery or scurvy, and then [07:43] whoever could still fight was crushed by [07:45] the Mammluks at the Battle of Almansura [07:47] in 1250. Jean’s account of the battle is [07:50] actually incredible. And forgive me for [07:52] getting hyped up about this, but this is [07:54] the kind of thing that gets me out of [07:55] bed in the morning. All I want to do is [07:57] to reach across the centuries and put [07:59] myself in the shoes of someone 800 years [08:01] ago. What did it smell like and taste [08:03] like? Give me the texture. I love this [08:05] because Jean doesn’t describe the battle [08:07] as this sequence of heroic actions, [08:09] which is what you would get in epic [08:11] poetry from the Middle Ages. He narrates [08:13] it as this mishmash of these close calls [08:16] and then this general insanity and [08:17] chaos, but then a few moments that stick [08:20] in his brain. He says, “Well, I was on [08:22] foot with my knights, wounded, as I have [08:23] already told you.” Up came the king with [08:26] his own division. There was a great [08:28] shouting and a tremendous noise of [08:30] trumpets and kettle drums. He halted on [08:32] a raised roadway. Never have I seen so [08:35] fine a man in arms. He towered head and [08:37] shoulders over his people, a gilded [08:39] helmet on his head, and in his hand a [08:41] sword of German steel. When he had [08:43] halted there, the good knights of his [08:44] household hurled themselves into the [08:46] midst of the Turks. You must know that [08:48] this was a great feat of arms, for there [08:50] was no shooting of arrows nor bolts on [08:53] both sides. It was a fight with mace and [08:55] sword. Let’s just take a second to talk [08:57] about what’s happening psychologically [08:58] here. So Jean is wounded. He’s on foot. [09:00] He’s surrounded by chaos. And the detail [09:02] that burns itself into his memory is the [09:05] image of the king. This is actually how [09:07] traumatized memory tends to work. [09:09] Everything is this crazy blur and then [09:11] one or two images crystallize and stick. [09:14] It’s like the brain has to cling to [09:16] something stable when everything else is [09:17] falling apart. Somehow, miraculously, [09:20] Jean survived all of this and managed to [09:22] get back to France in one piece, [09:24] although presumably he was pretty shaken [09:26] from the whole experience. 20 years [09:27] later, King Louie tried to get the boys [09:30] back together for another crusade. And [09:32] shockingly, a lot of people said yes, [09:34] even though the last one had been a [09:36] complete catastrophe, but Jean put his [09:38] foot down and said no. He had gone on [09:40] the seventh crusade with this enthusiasm [09:42] and this idea that God had wielded and [09:44] they were going to capture the Holy Land [09:45] from the godless heathens. But then the [09:48] actual reality was that the whole thing [09:49] was kind of pointless and the flower of [09:51] the French nobility along with the rest [09:54] of the army pooped themselves to death [09:55] or had their flesh rot off from gang [09:57] green before they even got to fight the [09:59] enemy. Now, it’s important to mention [10:00] here that Jean is writing all this or [10:02] actually dictating it about 50 years [10:04] after the events he’s describing. So, [10:06] he’s an old man at this point looking [10:08] back at his life. When you read his [10:10] account, you can tell he’s trying to [10:11] recreate this world of the holy [10:13] crusading king that no longer existed in [10:15] the France he lived in. But at this [10:17] point, King Louis is dead. His fellow [10:19] veterans are dead. The Crusades were all [10:21] a failure. And Jean is sitting there [10:23] thinking the same thing that a lot of [10:25] American veterans have found themselves [10:26] thinking in the past few decades. What [10:28] were we even doing there? What was the [10:30] point of all this suffering? We’ll never [10:32] know if he had any symptoms of PTSD, but [10:34] we can certainly tell that he’s carrying [10:36] an injured soul and that his entire [10:38] worldview was crushed by this event he [10:40] lived through in his early 20s. But like [10:42] I said before, Jean wasn’t a career [10:44] soldier. He kind of just tagged along in [10:45] the crusade out of a sense of Christian [10:47] feudal duty to his holy king. I want to [10:49] look at like a career soldier. What [10:51] about the guys who did this kind of [10:53] thing constantly? What kind of [10:54] psychological effect did it have on [10:56] them? 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Also, new merch [11:36] is now live. We have the chronically [11:37] online crusader t-shirt, as well as the [11:40] OG Medieval Mindset Charlemagne shirt, [11:42] the mug, the hat. All available at [11:44] medievalmindset.com. [11:46] Use code Mindset for 10% off all [11:48] purchases. One more thing, if you love [11:50] my content, you love medieval history. [11:52] Go sign up for the Patreon. For just a [11:54] few dollars a month, you get early [11:55] access to my videos, access to the [11:57] podcast, the book club, weekly essays on [11:59] cool medieval history stuff, Q&A with [12:01] yours truly. It’s really an incredible [12:03] community. So, sign up now. Back to the [12:05] video. Well, there’s a really convenient [12:07] narrative connection for me here because [12:09] Jean Dejuan V’s grandson, Jeff Desani, [12:12] is exactly the guy we’re looking for. He [12:14] grew up hearing his grandfather’s [12:16] stories about the Crusades and he ended [12:18] up going to war himself and then he [12:20] basically came up with this whole [12:21] philosophical system to try and make [12:23] sense of all the suffering. Jeff was the [12:26] third son in his family, which in the [12:28] Middle Ages meant he inherited [12:29] absolutely nothing. That really sucks. [12:31] But what’s cool for us is that it meant [12:33] he had to become a tournament fighter [12:35] and earned money and honor by messing [12:36] people up. Eventually, he graduated to [12:39] real warfare during the Hundred Years [12:40] War, and got captured and ransomed by [12:42] the English twice. There’s also this [12:44] story about Jeff where he apparently [12:47] once tracked down a man who had betrayed [12:49] him, dragged him out of bed, decapitated [12:52] him, and mounted the body parts on the [12:53] town gates. Eventually, he was appointed [12:55] the job of bearer of the Oriflam, which [12:58] was the sacred battle standard of [13:00] France. This was a ridiculously [13:02] dangerous job because you’re the guy [13:04] holding this incredibly important [13:06] ceremonial flag, which means everyone on [13:08] the other side is going to notice you [13:10] and try to kill you immediately so they [13:12] can steal the flag because that type of [13:15] thing was huge for medieval battlefield [13:16] morale. He actually did end up dying at [13:19] the battle of Poatier in 1356 with the [13:22] flag still in his hands surrounded by [13:24] five English soldiers who he had [13:26] apparently taken with him. Jeff was of [13:28] course very much respected by every dude [13:30] in the realm and sometime before his [13:32] heroic death at Poatier he actually [13:34] wrote a book called the book of chivalry [13:36] which for about a century afterwards was [13:39] basically the operating manual for [13:41] French knighthood. What’s interesting [13:42] about the book is that Jeffa is pretty [13:44] blunt about the reality of war. It’s not [13:46] like some flowery ode to fighting or [13:48] whatever. He talks about the hunger and [13:51] the thirst and the sleepless nights, [13:53] battling for days at a time, watching [13:54] your friends die. The point of [13:56] mentioning all this stuff is because he [13:58] wants the reader, who’s presumably a [14:00] young knight, to know what’s coming. [14:02] There’s this part where Jeff talks about [14:04] a certain point on a military campaign [14:06] where you feel like, and I quote, even [14:09] nature is going against you. If you look [14:11] at the context, it seems like he’s doing [14:13] his best to describe this sensation of [14:15] your own body becoming alien to you, [14:18] something that we would label today as [14:19] disassociation. Of course, his solution [14:22] to this is to push through it, but the [14:24] fact that he even acknowledges it in a [14:26] 14th century book is actually pretty [14:28] insane. You don’t really find that kind [14:29] of thing a lot. Another idea that Jeff [14:31] touches on frequently is terror, which [14:33] definitely means the fear of death, but [14:35] more importantly to him and to the [14:36] chivalous French mind, the fear of [14:38] shame. The whole late medieval western [14:41] ethical system that he exists in is [14:43] built on a single idea, which is that [14:45] the worth of any deed is measured by how [14:47] much it costs you to accomplish it. [14:49] Jousting is good. Tournament fighting is [14:51] a little better because it’s more like [14:52] war. Real war is the best of them all [14:55] because it actually destroys you. The [14:57] suffering is what makes it worth [14:59] anything. You see this idea a lot in [15:01] medieval thinking. Like imagine monks [15:03] finding God through fasting and wearing [15:04] hair shirts so they’re constantly [15:06] uncomfortable or in pain. So basically [15:08] what we’ve ended up with here is a [15:10] system where the psychological wounds of [15:12] war aren’t really something to be [15:13] avoided or even necessarily treated. [15:16] There’s something that you have to earn [15:18] and then endure, but then you convert [15:20] them into your identity. At least that’s [15:21] what Jeff did. You’re not allowed to not [15:24] be damaged because being damaged is [15:27] proof that you were there. Also kind of [15:29] ironic or maybe actually heroic [15:31] depending on how you look at it that he [15:32] wrote a book about what it looks like to [15:34] be destroyed by war and to keep going [15:36] anyway. Okay. And then he died, proving [15:38] that point. There’s a reason he’s [15:40] remembered as one of the coldest knights [15:42] who ever lived. Let’s go a little more [15:44] local for a second. Medieval people [15:45] witnessed way more violence in their [15:47] day-to-day lives than we do. So, it’s [15:49] worth exploring how that impacted their [15:51] mental health in a broader communal way. [15:53] To do that, we have to look at one of [15:55] the most incredible surviving documents [15:57] from the late Middle Ages, a [15:58] canonization inquest from 1363 in [16:01] province southeastern France. A [16:03] canonization inquest was basically a [16:05] papal legal proceeding to determine [16:07] whether or not someone should be a [16:08] saint. And in this case, the candidate [16:10] was a noble woman named Countest Deline [16:13] de Pu Michelle. She had passed away [16:15] about 3 years before the inquest and a [16:17] bunch of people in the local community [16:19] believed that she had maintained some [16:21] kind of mystical direct line to God [16:23] during her life. So 68 witnesses came [16:26] before the two papal representatives and [16:28] they testified about Deline’s miracles [16:30] and their own experiences. What does any [16:33] of this have to do with PTSD or moral [16:35] injury, you ask? Stick with me. I’m [16:37] leading you on the beautiful, sensual [16:39] dance of history. The witnesses in the [16:41] inquest had all survived the Black [16:43] Death, mercenary invasions, and Civil [16:45] War in a 20-year window between 1343 and [16:48] 1363. That’s a lot to try and process in [16:51] such a short period of time. These [16:53] people ran the spectrum of medieval [16:55] society. You have merchants and soldiers [16:57] and servants and noble lords and local [16:59] nuns and future cardinals, but they all [17:01] give a similar description of what [17:03] Deline was best at healing. All the [17:05] stuff that they had gone through in the [17:07] last few decades had left them with [17:08] these internal emotional wounds that [17:11] they couldn’t really explain or properly [17:13] describe, but she was able to somehow [17:16] make them go away. So these are 14th [17:17] century people in rural France [17:20] explicitly articulating that war and [17:22] violence produce a different kind of [17:23] wound than physical illness which means [17:25] it requires a different kind of healing. [17:27] Let’s just pull an example from the [17:29] inquests and see what we can see. One of [17:31] the witnesses is a local lore named [17:33] Ferrarius of Kukaron. In May of 1358, [17:36] he’s ordered to lead his troops in an [17:38] attempt to retake the walled town of [17:39] Kukuron from a mercenary company that’s [17:41] been terrorizing the area. Before the [17:43] battle, he’s all messed up. He visits [17:45] Delphine and he tells her about the [17:46] whole situation. What he says is that [17:48] he’s afraid of going into battle, but [17:50] he’s also afraid of not going because [17:52] retreating would bring this unbearable [17:54] shame on him and his household. Ferius [17:56] is trapped here. This medieval honor [17:58] code has kind of forced him into a [18:00] position where both of the available [18:01] choices absolutely suck. If he fights, [18:04] he’s probably going to have to kill [18:05] somebody, which the church understood as [18:07] a wound to the soul, or he himself could [18:09] die. Then if he doesn’t fight, that’s [18:11] cowardice, which messes with your [18:13] identity and your social standing. [18:14] Deline, of course, tells him not to go, [18:16] but he tells her he can’t follow her [18:18] advice because, and I quote, “He did not [18:21] dare to follow her warning because he [18:23] would be shamed and reproached for [18:25] timidity.” So Delphine makes him a [18:27] promise, which is that he won’t kill [18:29] anyone, and she’ll somehow intercede [18:31] directly with God on his behalf. She’s [18:33] basically doing her best to try and [18:35] manage his moral injury before it even [18:37] happens. Now, miracles happen pretty [18:40] frequently in the Middle Ages, and I [18:41] personally believe miracles still happen [18:43] now, but were just too distracted and [18:45] overstimulated to notice them. [18:47] Everything Deline told him ended up [18:49] coming true. Both of his horses went [18:51] lame. He He was forced to leave the [18:53] battlefield. His men charged ahead [18:55] without him, right into an ambush, and [18:56] they get slaughtered. But he escapes [18:58] unscathed with his honor and his soul [19:00] still intact. Boom. Not bad. When the [19:03] papal commissioners question Ferrarius [19:04] about this, they ask him directly, “If [19:06] the horses hadn’t been injured, would [19:08] you have ridden with your men?” It is [19:10] kind of a loaded question because he’s [19:12] testifying in a cathedral in front of a [19:14] bishop and an archbishop. So, he wants [19:17] to look like a good Christian, but he [19:18] still answers honestly. Yes, he would [19:20] have ridden. Of course, he would have [19:22] ridden. He’s a knight for God’s sake. [19:23] His fear of shame would have overridden [19:25] his fear of death. He would have been in [19:27] that ambush, and he would have died [19:29] right alongside his men. Let’s just sit [19:31] and let this marinate for just a second. [19:33] This man came before a papal court and [19:35] admitted publicly that he had been [19:37] afraid. This shimmerous Catholic warrior [19:40] had been afraid. He admitted that he had [19:42] literally needed divine intervention to [19:44] survive with his honor intact. The [19:45] inquest basically gave him a structured [19:48] communal space to tell that story. And [19:50] in telling it, he was able to process [19:52] it. It’s the same way that Jean Dejuanve [19:54] was able to process his trauma by [19:56] dictating it all out loud to ascribe 50 [19:59] years after the fact. This is a [20:01] civilization that understood at some [20:03] level what moral injury required for [20:05] healing. They built something, the [20:07] inquest, the penance, the community, the [20:09] saint that basically functioned as a [20:11] structured space for doing the work that [20:13] moral injury requires. Confession, [20:16] narrative, and public witness and [20:18] communal reintegration. But let’s put [20:20] the finishing touches on this medieval [20:21] masterpiece. I’m not saying that [20:22] medieval soldiers didn’t suffer from [20:24] PTSD. I mean, they almost certainly did. [20:26] Even Jeff Wade Charie in his book on [20:28] chivalry mentions that something knights [20:30] will have to deal with when they come [20:31] home from war is, I quote, being beset [20:34] by great terrors. So clearly, this was a [20:36] thing. What I’m really trying to say is [20:38] that we’ve spent the last 100 years or [20:39] so treating combat trauma as a strictly [20:41] medical problem. And the solutions are [20:43] usually prescriptions or cognitive [20:45] behavioral therapy. Sometimes that works [20:47] and sometimes it doesn’t. But I think [20:48] what’s important for us to understand is [20:50] that moral wounds are very real and need [20:52] to be treated as such. I know I say this [20:55] in every video and I’ve already said it [20:56] in this one, but everyone thinks of the [20:58] Middle Ages as this brutal and chaotic [21:00] time where nobody knew anything. But [21:02] just look at the evidence I’ve laid out [21:03] here. Clearly, in some ways they [21:05] understood the nuances of mental health [21:06] better than we do. But what do you [21:08] think? Is there something to this or do [21:10] we have a better approach now? Let me [21:11] know in the comments. As always, I’m [21:13] John. This has been the medieval [21:15] mindset. And remember, the past isn’t [21:17] gone. It’s simply waiting to be [21:18] rediscovered.