Medieval lives

[denaria]

I often like to imagine what life would have been like for me had I been born in earlier times. I suspect that if I had been born in say 1256, and assuming I survived childhood, it would have been in my own best interest to get me to a nunnery PDQ or face being burnt as a witch or heretic. How do other INTJs think they would have lived?

[AgentofGaming]

I think most people would end up as serfs and farm for a baron for life.
If I got apprenticed into a skilled trade life could be better.
or if I could became a merchant and accumulated enough wealth I could work my way into nobility.

If I lived in medieval China I could be a scholar and take a test to enter government administration.

[ElstonGunn]

I'd probably work 18 hours per day and live in squalor. Then I'd get dysentery and crap myself to death, just like every male did back then. If I were female, I'd die while giving birth to my 15th child (meaning that I'd be about 19 years old), just like every woman did back then. :p

[Nomad]

A soldier, dead young from disease or war.

-Nomad

[ssfanatic]

I hate the medieval era. Its so disjointed and people were so uneducated. I would probably have been burnt at the stake bec i would want to know why when i jumped i came back down :). But i would have probably lived as a hermit first, then i would wake up to scores of people with pitchforks, torches, and wearing sacks for close banging of my door. Man, hooray post modern era!

[Zilal]

It's true I'm an independent oddball, but I'm also pretty laid-back, and I'd probably go along with whatever path I was born into and keep my oddness to myself. I imagine I might like living in a nunnery.

[Mountain Lion]

A soldier, a knight or a priest/monk, regardless of where exactly I would be born and into what kind of family... sad, but it was a sad time.

[Nightelf]

A hermit. Or a heretic. ;-)

[thod]

Then I'd get dysentery and crap myself to death, just like every male did back then. If I were female, I'd die while giving birth to my 15th child

The males had it far better, The women and children would drink water leaving them open to cholera and other nasties. The men drank weak beer which contains no bugs.

So now you can justify you beer drinking by blaming it on the evolutionary advantages it gave to your ancestors.

[quentin]

A good book to read about daily life in the 14th century is A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman (one of my favorite historians). It was particularly intriguing her argument that Europe experienced an economic boom after the Black Plague because the scarcity of labor drove up wages for everybody.

[yondyr]

lol, my first thought and of many INTJ's, I'm sure...yeTo view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. the stink, the disease, the ignorance. And others would hark back to the romance of it all.

[quentin]

I would have converted to Islam or made the trek across the Silk Road to China, because those were the only civilized lands in the medieval era. Europe was a backwards hovel populated by ignorant, superstitious barbarians.

[Doppelbock]

I would have tried to become Merlin's apprentice.

[SeaCzar]

A good book to read about daily life in the 14th century is A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman (one of my favorite historians). It was particularly intriguing her argument that Europe experienced an economic boom after the Black Plague because the scarcity of labor drove up wages for everybody.


I will get that book. Barbara Tuchman is one of my favourite authors as well. I've read The Zimmermann Telegraph, and The Proud Tower.

[prometheus]

I thought this thread was informative: To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Also you uppity INTJ women might want to read this:
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I'm a firm believer in self-sufficiency, but won't willingly give up modern technology.

[DeadSpace]

alchemist, herbalist, inventor, scholar, scribe...or woodworker of some sort.

[yondyr]

I can't access that second link of yours, prometheus, but maybe it's just as well.... :cheesy:

[prometheus]

I can't access that second link of yours, prometheus, but maybe it's just as well.... :cheesy:


that site goes down a lot. It's an essay titled Control of Uppity Women Behind Witchcraft Accusations, I think you would enjoy it.

Here is another link. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[Lagawrd]

I would probably be a beggar. I would probably have no reason and no power to fight or to struggle to become a higher rank. People at that time were right or wrong according to their rank.

If I was born into a royal family I would probably become the highest rank there is... most likely a king.

[integratedvelocity]

Well, hopefully I would be a Free Walser in the great canton of Graubünden, speaking a dialect of German that no Germans can understand. However, if we were looking at my mother's side, I would have been pretty well off compared to most people, supposedly, one of our ancestors was a cousin to William I. Though with my luck, I would have gotten the plague. Or been married off to some idiot with bad teeth thirty years older than me.

And I have to disagree with quentin. Any society that can produce Beowulf has my everlasting love.

[Darkmist]

On pilgrimage. Women who valued independence found that travel in the 'name of god', in the company of guards, was not only permissable but respected. As long as they paused here and there to appear pious, they were able to travel the world and either never marry or be married and escape their husbands.

Or, I'd be a witch, so remote and deep within a forest that no one knew I was there. And to faciliate that, I'd spread rumors about the dangers of the forest, ghosts, walking trees and so on.

Herbalist is good too. So is Black Agnes of Scotland. (Castle Dunbar?)

[coffeeloverfreak]

Well in the middle ages, as a woman, I'd probably be married with a bunch of kids, and spending my days cooking and cleaning and other fun stuff like that. Being Jewish, I'd probably be living in a ghetto somewhere in Eastern Europe or perhaps Spain, married to a merchant, middle-class in a time when the middle-class didn't really exist. The good news is we wouldn't be serfs, because we wouldn't be allowed to work the land. The bad news is, every few years, the serfs would get pissed off at their bad lot in life and decide to take it out on me and my neighbours.

[PortInStorm]

Ya, finding out if I was pregnant by putting garlic in there and seeing if my breath smelled in the morning, eating part of my last child's placenta for good luck, having my husband have sex with me while I'm in prolonged labour to move things along quicker, giving birth standing up, having superstitious midwives trying to smush the newborns features to suit their fancy, likely causing mild brain trauma... good times all around.

[Antares]

I'd probably be the daughter of a nobleman with many suitors and look upon them inferior serfs in disdain. Later I would be accused of worshipping Satan and eventually arrested for witchcraft. Just before my execution by burning at a stake, I would vanish in a puff of smoke.

[sostman237]

I would probably want to be a monk, but most likely I'd be a serf...

[True Rune]

I'd probably be in a medieval print shop copying books.

[Indy]

Like Marco Polo, leave Europe and travel to China.

Otherwise, a monk.

[Rudy]

In all probability, life would be really, really shitty. In the literal sense, with the dysentery ElstonGunn mentioned. I would be a peasant, and everything would suck. If I was really lucky, I could join a monastery and spend my life copying books.

[Lucid]

In all probability, life would be really, really shitty. In the literal sense, with the dysentery ElstonGunn mentioned. I would be a peasant, and everything would suck. If I was really lucky, I could join a monastery and spend my life copying books.

Tedious and hard on the eyes until I arrived in a longboat and pillaged your monastery. ;D

[Cocoa]

Most of us would have been peasants or serfs. Such is reality.
What we would have liked to be, is a whole other thing.

An excellent short book on a medieval life (of a single woman and people around her):
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[Valiyn]

A bowyer. I make bows and arrows as a passion. Even if not born into the availability of the role, deterring an INTJ is very difficult. A hobby merchant can overcome a merchant that is properly manipulated.

[Tocsin]

Can I be Tim, the Enchanter?

"That rodent's got a mean streak a mile wide."

Or perhaps Dennis?

"Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."

;D

[Nemesis]

Village idiot.

[Hanfgeist]

I'd be a meddlesome and curious alchemist like Paracelsus and probably get run out of town/killed by the peasants for sorcery (come to think of it, that pretty much describes my life now....)

[Mike]

Odds are, I'd die in my first battle. Prior to it, Men-at-Arms to a boy who spends his day raping and pillaging from his father's serfs, appalled at the life I lived.