Abstract

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